Tales from the Wishverse - Gods Madmen
by Tate Shepard
Summary: Ever wonder just how the "Wishverse" got so screwed up?  Rated R for language, and some violence ( but mostly for safety's sake)
1. Prologue - Playground Misfits

Tales from the Wishverse – Misfits  
  
By Andrew Crouch  
  
Copyright 2002  
  
Rated R for language, some violence (mostly for safety's sake)  
  
Disclaimer – Characters property of the good folks at Mutant Enemy.  
  
  
  
Prologue - The Playground Misfits (1986)  
  
Willow Rosenberg walked glumly out of the back entrance of Sunnydale Elementary School, trying her best not to be noticed. It was recess – she knew recess was for playing. For running and jumping, for climbing around on the playground equipment. She glanced quickly around, saw the other kids doing exactly those recess-y things, and sighed sadly. Recess wasn't for hiding, but it was worse if she did try to play with them. One of the kids would laugh at her, for her red hair, or her clothes, or for how smart she was. That was the worst. She liked being the one in class who raised her hand every time the teacher asked a question, who got As on everything even though she didn't really have to study. But the other kids would snicker behind her back for it, call her names, would point at her and giggle to themselves in the lunchroom when she ate all by herself. Mommy told her it was just because they were jealous - but she said with kind of a sad face, as if Mommy was lying, and it really didn't make Willow feel any better. Mommy had also told her that the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy were real, and the other kids had laughed at her for that, too. So Willow had just nodded as her Mommy told her to just keep trying to be friendly, and had went on trying to hide during recess. Some days it worked, and they left her alone. Other days -  
  
"Hey, Red," came a voice behind her. Willow cringed - she hated that voice most of all. Cordelia Chase, long, dark hair trailing behind her, beautiful dress dirtied by a careless game of tag, brown eyes laughing mercilessly at her. And Willow hated that nickname that Cordy had given her, Red, like she was a crayon or something. She walked a little faster, trying to pretend she hadn't heard...  
  
"Hey, Red," Cordy said again, walking toward her with her little group of friends trailing dutifully a few feet behind. "Are you trying to look like Pippi Longstocking or something?"  
  
The group of girls tittered, watching with wide eyes, waiting to see how the shy girl would react.  
  
Willow turned nervously around. She couldn't understand how Cordy had meant what she said as an insult - Pippi Longstocking was one of her favorite characters. She could have fun all day, was outgoing and had friends. She could even lift up a horse - what was wrong with that? And how could little Willow Rosenberg ever hope to be like that? Willow stared down at her faded overalls, reached up to feel her pigtails, the ones her Mommy had braided for her just this morning. She had always imagined Pippi to be the most beautiful girl in the town - like Cordelia. Willow just looked like a boy, everyone told her.  
  
"H-Hi, Cordelia," she said softly, afraid to raise her voice.  
  
"I said, are you trying to look like Pippi Longstocking?"  
  
"N-No, Cordy, I'm...I'm just..." she fidgeted, not sure what she could say. "I just don't want to...uhm, wear a dress...to, you know, get it dirty."  
  
Cordy giggled - the other girls, following her lead, laughed with her. "But how else are you gonna look pretty? My Mommy says that girls shouldn't dress like boys, 'cause it isn't ladylike."  
  
Willow swallowed. "I...I don't know, Cordy. M-Maybe, maybe it doesn't matter...it's not what you wear that makes you pretty..."  
  
"Duh," Cordy said. "Of course not. You've got to wear pretty make- up." Cordy was proud that she was the only girl in school allowed to wear makeup.  
  
"No," Willow said more softly, wanting to shrink into herself. "It's...it's not that, either. You have to be pretty on the inside -"  
  
"On the inside?" Cordy said disgustedly, "Like, your guts and stuff?"  
  
"No," Willow said, "No, like, how nice you are. You can't be mean to...uhm, other people, to be pretty."  
  
Cordy seemed to actually consider this for a long moment. During that moment, Willow allowed herself some small hope - maybe, maybe they were listening to her. They wanted to be nice people, to be pretty, to be friends with her...  
  
But it lasted only a moment. When Cordelia spoke again, if felt as if she had reached out and punched Willow in the stomach.  
  
"No, that's stupid. That's BS," she said it proudly, an expression she had picked up from her beautiful Mommy, though Cordy didn't really know what the B and S stood for, "You are just too weird, Willow."  
  
Cordy turned away, and the girls followed her, giggling, whispering about how strange the shy one was. Willow sat down on a bench, looking down at her feet, small face working itself into tears. When she had thought it up, it had sounded so smart - nice people were pretty, it didn't matter if you were ugly or beautiful on the outside. But when she said it, when the words actually emerged from her mouth for the world to laugh at, it sounded so stupid, like an excuse for how ugly she felt, how ugly the other girls made her feel. Willow felt a hot tear roll down her cheek, and leaned down into her hands, anxious for the bell to ring, so she could get back to the world she trusted, the world of books, of fiction, where people really did think that beauty came from the inside...  
  
After a moment, she looked up to see a boy at her side on the bench, looking down at her, his expression as sad and nervous as she felt. He had dark hair, tousled and sweaty, as if he had been running. A pair of thick glasses almost covered up his entire face, though behind them, she thought she could see tears in his eyes.  
  
"Hey," he said softly. "You're Willow, right?"  
  
She rubbed her face with the backs of her hands. "Yeah."  
  
He nodded silently, opened his mouth, closed it as if he couldn't get it to work right, then finally spoke, rapid and hushed. "I think you're pretty."  
  
She nearly fell off the bench at the words. She had never heard those words, or anything close, from anyone, except maybe her Mommy, who didn't really count anyway. She wanted to say something, like thank you, but she could only gape at him as if he had grown an extra arm.  
  
He looked down at his hands. "I heard what you said to Cordelia. That's really smart, it just sounds...you know, right, or something. How pretty you are depends on how you nice you are. I like that."  
  
She smiled, and he smiled back.  
  
"But I like your hair. It's....it's red. Red is a pretty color for hair."  
  
Willow finally found her voice. "What...What's your name?"  
  
"Alexander Harris," he said. His face again scrunched into an unreadable mask, like he was halfway between crying and laughing. "My Dad calls me Alex. I don't like...that name much. It sounds really lame."  
  
Willow decided immediately that she didn't like the name either. "What do your friends call you?"  
  
He shrugged. "I dunno. Mostly four-eyes, I guess."  
  
She frowned. "That's kinda mean."  
  
"Well, that's kinda the problem, actually. I don't have a lot of friends."  
  
She shook her head. "Me neither."  
  
Alexander seemed surprised at that. Then inspiration struck. "Maybe me and you could be friends."  
  
She grinned happily at him. "I like that idea."  
  
They got up and started to walk around the playground, being careful to keep a distance between themselves and Cordy's little group.  
  
"So you don't like being called Alex," she said, thinking aloud.  
  
"And Alexander is just too dorky," he said, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.  
  
"How 'bout if we just keep the A-L-E off altogether? Xander."  
  
He stared at his shoes for a moment, and then his face lit up. "Yeah, I like that. Kinda super-agent-y, maybe. But what's our group name?"  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"I mean, if we're gonna be friends, we've got to have a group name. Like the Justice League of America?"  
  
"How 'bout the Playground Misfits?" Willow suggested.  
  
"Yeah," he said excitedly, then frowned. "What does misfit mean?"  
  
"Like an outsider, somebody who doesn't belong in the group," she explained patiently, "Like that movie, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer? Remember all those toys that couldn't find a home?"  
  
He nodded. "How about Playground Bandits?"  
  
"I don't know," she said doubtfully. "Are we gonna steal something?"  
  
"What do you like to watch on TV?" he asked.  
  
She thought for a moment. "I like the nature shows on PBS."  
  
"What else?"  
  
"Uhmmm, I like...Oh, I love Scooby Doo. Sometimes I wish I could be part of the Scooby Gang. Just like Amy - she's got red hair, but everybody think's she's the prettiest one."  
  
Xander glanced around, to make sure no one was watching, and then started to shuffle around, waving his arms back and forth.  
  
Willow watched with confusion on her face. "What are you doing?"  
  
He grinned at her. "The Scooby Dance. Our official group dance."  
  
She stared at him for a moment, then dissolved into hysterical laughter. After a moment, he joined her. 


	2. Ch.1 - Square One

Chapter One - Square One (1997)  
  
Jesse walked out of the back entrance of Sunnydale High School, glancing nervously around - in this town, it payed to know whether somebody was watching you. He didn't know why he felt so paranoid sometimes, especially at night, but a lot of the time it simply felt like he wasn't alone. Normally he wouldn't think about going anywhere without a couple of buds at his side, but this afternoon he had had to stay behind for some help in math (yeah, Ms. Jenkins was hot, but that didn't change the fact that Algebra II was a total bitch), and he had hardly been aware that time had slipped on as much as it had, and the sun had set. He was supposed to meet Willow and Xander at the Bronze at 7:00, but damned if part of him didn't want to go home, crawl in between the sheets like he was a fucking six-year-old or something.  
  
He often found himself wondering just what in the hell it was that made this town so jumpy - what made the day seem shorter and the night just a bit darker around here? It wasn't just the multiple cemeteries (though he had to admit that was a helluva coincidence) - it just seemed like this town attracted a bad element. It wasn't a literal thing, not like monsters or evil spacemen or something (at least he didn't think so), Sunnydale just put out a bad...vibe, or something.  
  
Ahead of him the Bronze sign glared harshly against the darkness around it, beckoning him closer, promising peace and protection, if he could manage the last few steps from here to there safely. As he moved closer, he straightened, unconciously shrugging off some the nervousness and anxiety that he felt, wanting to loosen up some. His current goal in life was to sashay into the company of one Cordelia Chase, the forbidden fruit, a goal for which he was repeatedly razzed by one Xander Harris, purporting himself to be Jesse's best friend. Of course, Xand would say, Cordy is hot, she's the epitome of hot, but it's like the apple in Snow White - one bite and you're dead meat, man. Yeah, Jesse would invariably answer back, but that would be one goddamned sweet bite. So wrapped in thoughts of Cordy Chase and impending Bronze-age was Jesse that he nearly missed the blonde woman who leaned against the wall to his left, watching him as he walked. She moved toward him, so silently and quickly that for a moment he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him in the semi-darkness. It was only after she was leaning into him, damn near touching him, before he stopped and realized that she must be real.  
  
"Evening," she said breathily, the word flowing icily over his face.  
  
"Uh...evening," he said hoarsely, throat for no reason suddenly devoid of all moisture. "Is there, uh, something I can help you with?"  
  
She laughed, a tinkling little laugh that sent shivers up his spine. "Depends. Maybe I can help you."  
  
His face grew suspicious. "Help me with what?"  
  
She didn't answer, but instead brought her pale hands up to massage his chest. For a moment, he was speechless - this was the kind of thing you read about in Penthouse, the kind of thing you dreamed about. Yet... now that it was happening, happening to him, he felt unnacountably nervous again. Sex just seemed to radiate off of the woman in front of him - but she was cold, her hands like ice that chilled him even through the fabric of his t-shirt. Though as he stared into her eyes, it seemed not to matter much - those eyes told you that it was cool, that she was hungry, for his body, for his soul. He was the only one that could make it better, could quench that powerful thirst, and he would be grinning for every moment of it...  
  
"Hey, Jess, you gonna come inside or play tongue tag with that chick all night?"  
  
The voice came from very far away, from the fucking moon, and Jesse wanted to tell it to go away, just get the fuck outta here and let the business be done, but suddenly the girl was scrambling off of him, chagrined. Jesse lingered for a moment in dreamland, eyes closed and lips parted slightly, before staring furiously at the door to the Bronze and the source of the interruption.  
  
Xander stood in the doorway expectantly. For a moment Jesse wanted nothing more in life then to wrap his hands right around that scrawny white neck and just squeeze, just squeeze the life right out of him, squeeze until his eyes fell out.  
  
Instead Jesse forced a smile onto his face, and waved Xander back inside, "Yeah, we'll be inside in a minute, just hold your goddamned horses."  
  
He turned back to the girl without waiting for a reply from Xander.  
  
"Look, I don't know who in the hell you are, but I've got to say, I like your style. Wanna come inside for a drink?"  
  
She smiled kittenishly. "You must be psychic. A drink was exactly what I came out for."  
  
  
  
Willow and Xander sat in their customary couch in the center of the Bronze, chatting busily as was the nightly ritual. Presently they deliberated as to the possible nature of the girl who Xander had found climbing all over Jesse - Xander advanced the theory that she was a hooker, while Willow was inclined to give Jesse the benefit of the doubt, proposing that the girl was simply mentally impaired.  
  
Jesse walked past the couch over to the bar, deliberately ignoring them, the strange girl in tow. She smiled devilishly at him as he ordered their drinks.  
  
"I'll have a scotch on the rocks," Jesse said swankily. "And for the lady?"  
  
"Bloody Mary," she said, almost automatically, her eyes still on Jesse.  
  
The bartender looked at them blandly. "You got some I.D., children?"  
  
Jesse reddened slightly, reached for his wallet, and brought out his fake.  
  
"N.G., buddy row," the older man said, stifling a laugh. "Why don't you take your pretty little friend here and swim back to the kiddie pool."  
  
Still smiling shyly, she reached into her pocket, and pulled out a driver's license.  
  
"Twenty-two. Welcome to the real world." He poured her the drink, and she started to sip it slowly.  
  
Jesse stared at her. "T-T-Twenty-two? Damn, you don't look twenty- two."  
  
"You'd be surprised," she said softly around her straw.  
  
Xander sidled up to the bar. "Barkeep. Couple of brewskies down this way."  
  
"Look, man, for the third and final time, no I.D. means no booze."  
  
Xander tried to look insulted. "But like I said before, my wallet's in the other -"  
  
"Nope."  
  
"Other pants?" he suggested hopefully.  
  
"That one didn't work last week. I think you're running out of fresh material."  
  
Xander scowled. "Alright, how about, my dog ate my I.D.?"  
  
The bartender started to refill the peanut container. "I think that one's for your English teacher, numb nuts."  
  
Xander shrugged. "Fair enough. Couple of Cokes down this way?"  
  
The bartender snorted, and slid the bottles down the table.  
  
Xander glanced over at Jesse, who looked eight seconds from throwing his date down on the bar right then. She was blonde, small, quiet - everything that Xander thought Jesse didn't look for in a girl (the exact opposite of Cordy Chase, for that matter). Xander looked more closely at the girl, and tried to remember if he had ever seen her around Sunnydale before. Sure, it wasn't Mayberry, but live around here for a while and eventually you had to see most of the sights and sounds the town had to offer. The Bronze was the one and only hotspot of social activity for the still-living-at-home crowd in town, and he, Jesse, and Willow, as well most of the Sunnydale High student body, were regular patrons, but he couldn't remember ever seeing the girl around. Or at school, for that matter.  
  
He tapped his friend on the shoulder. For a moment, Jesse ignored him, and when he did turn around, it was with a glare of annoyance that was both unfamiliar and unwelcome on his face.  
  
"What do you want, Xand?"  
  
"Just wanted to see if you and your ladyfriend wanted to join me and Wills at the Scoob couch. Don't trip over yourself on the way over, though."  
  
"Oh," the girl said excitedly, "Come on, Jess. You've told me so much about your friends, I'm just dying to meet them."  
  
For a moment, Jesse looked totally perplexed. Then he seemed to catch the drift, and nodded slowly. "Yeah...told you so much about them, sure. Where're you sitting?"  
  
Xander walked them to the couch, where Willow had begun to get impatient by herself.  
  
"Sorry about that, Will. This is Jesse's new friend...uhm, I'm not sure I caught the name -"  
  
"Darla," the girl said quickly. "Darla Sheppard. I'm at UC- Sunnydale, living on campus."  
  
Willow smiled shyly, waved politely.  
  
Xander, for his part, was nearly speechless. How Jesse had managed to snag a girl without his knowing it, much less a college student, much less a hot college student, was completely beyond Xander's ability to comprehended. Frantically, he motioned for the other boy to join him away from the table.  
  
Darla sat down on the couch beside Willow.  
  
"So...." Willow began earnestly.  
  
"....so," the other girl replied, after a moment of silence.  
  
Willow nodded to the guys, who appeared to be arguing, albeit whispering. "Guy stuff. Pretty complicated, that."  
  
Darla shrugged. "Not so complicated. You've just gotta practice."  
  
"Maybe so. Not having a steady, I guess I wouldn't know." Willow said, rather frostily.  
  
Darla frowned. "You mean you and Xander -"  
  
Before the girl could even finish the sentence, Willow was waving it off. "Nope, no way, not a chance. Just friends, best friends since first grade, just doing the buddy thing -"  
  
Darla smiled again. "Got it," she nodded, but there was a wink in her voice that Willow didn't appreciate much. Before she could come up with the proper response, however, Jesse and Xander returned to the couch.  
  
"So, Darla," Xander began, with the same kind of ice in his tone that Willow had used with the girl earlier. "What's your major?"  
  
"Pre-med. I'm actually only a part-time student right now. Riding my dad's pocket, I guess you could say."  
  
"So how did you and Jesse meet?" Willow asked.  
  
"Tutoring program at the University," Jesse answered quickly. "Darla's helping me with the Algebra."  
  
Willow glared at him angrily. "Jesse, you know, you could have come to me if you're having that much -"  
  
"I didn't want to bother you," Jesse said crossly. "Ms. Jenkins suggested I get some help outside of the school anyway."  
  
Willow looked ready to say something back, then thought better of it, and shrugged. "Suit yourself."  
  
"So what's my Jess like in school?" Darla asked.  
  
"Oh, you know, pretty qui-" Xander started to say, then caught the evil eye Jesse was sending his way. "Qui -, uh, Quick with the compliments. For the ladies. 'Cause they're all over him, you know? Will, wanna join me for a drink at the bar?"  
  
"But I'm not -" she started, then caught Xander's come-over-here-now gestures. "Not...uh, not not thirsty. Double negative, see, one cancels the other out. I'm parched. We'll be at the bar."  
  
Darla smiled as she watched them go. "I like your friends. They're...odd, which is good. Interesting."  
  
Jesse smiled, though it looked more like a grimace. "I'm glad. You wanna skip?"  
  
"But we just got here -"  
  
"Yeah, we made the standard appearance, but I want to get back to what was happening earlier," he smiled devilishly at her, a little greedily, "Pick up where we left off."  
  
For a moment, Darla's smile faltered, and Jesse thought that...for an instant...he saw something like anger in her radiant blue eyes. But only for an instant.  
  
"Sure," she said, her voice a few degrees colder then it had been a moment ago. "It's kinda dead in here anyway."  
  
She picked up her purse, and they left without a word. Willow and Xander watched them go from the bar.  
  
"Not a word to the rest of the Scoobs," Xander said, shaking his head. "I thought he might get a little distant when he found a girl that could stand him. Just not like this."  
  
"Don't worry," Willow said reassuringly, patting him on the hand. "When you get somebody, you can start acting like a jerk, too."  
  
"Thanks, Will, you always know how to cheer a guy up."  
  
  
  
Darla led Jesse away from the Bronze, back roughly in the direction of the downtown. She no longer cared whether anyone saw them - from any kind of distance, draining him would look like just a rather intense makeout session. And by the time the average passerby did notice something was wrong - perhaps when the boy started to scream - it would be far, far too late.  
  
Besides, the whelp was starting to seriously get on her nerves. In the bar, in the company of his equally annoying friends, he was the perfect pig, playing as though he had made the first move. It was not the first time that she had encountered one so arrogant and stupid as he, and she had no doubts that it would not be the last. Perhaps as a vampire, as her childe, he could learn to be more respectful of his elders. The Master would say she was being careless, mingling with this generation, pretending she was as empty-headed as she was so often mistaken to be. But a thousand years of isolated existence had apparently not improved his sense of taste...  
  
"You always did like to play with your food," came a voice from the shadows of an alley as they passed. Darla froze, in the utter shock of recognition - beside her, she felt the boy tense in a different kind of fright.  
  
The voice stepped out of the darkness, became a man of substance, tall, covered nearly from head to toe in black, as if he had stepped out of a funeral procession.  
  
For a moment, she could not find the breath to speak. The boy at her side did, however, and what he said sent her already low opinion through the floor.  
  
"Look," Jesse started hoarsely, then cleared his throat, trying to speak firmly, "I don't know who you are, but if its money you want -"  
  
The dark man vamped out, sneering down at the youth distastefully. "Get out of here."  
  
"Oh, shit," the boy whispered, backing away. "Jesus, what the hell's wrong with you, man?"  
  
He grabbed Darla's arm, and was surprised to find her as still as stone. "Come on, Darla, we've got to get out -"  
  
She vamped out and grabbed the boy's arm. Before he could pull himself away, she twisted his arm back, forcing him around and into her arms. She threw his head back, pausing with her fangs glistening a few inches above his neck. Jesse started to cry, mumbling to himself in the darkness.  
  
Darla smiled cruelly at the shadow-man.  
  
"What will you give me for this boy, Angel?"  
  
Angel's features slid back to normalcy. He held up his arms placatingly. "Just let him go, and we'll talk."  
  
She seemed to consider for a moment. "I'm your sire, so by natural law, you can't harm a hair on my sweet little head. And even if you could, you'd never reach me before I drained half the blood out of his puny body. I could be wrong, but it looks as if I'm holding all the cards, Angelus."  
  
Angel grimaced slightly at the name. "Alright, but if you kill him, I kill ten of yours. You know what I'm capable of."  
  
She smirked. "Well, they didn't call you the Scourge of Europe for nothing. But I think your information is a little off. The vampires in this happy little burg are no more mine then they are yours."  
  
That bit of news seem to catch Angel by surprise. "You mean, you're not the master that they all keep referring to?"  
  
She shook her head. "Not a master. The Master."  
  
The other's mouth opened slightly in dismay. "You're working for him? What the hell do you hope to accomplish with that derelict?"  
  
"Oh, come on, Angel. You can't tell me you don't feel it like the rest of us. The mouth of Hell."  
  
"What do you mean?" Angel whispered, though the terrible idea had already begun to take shape in his head as soon as he had arrived in Sunnydale. Darla watched it progress with bemusement on her demonic face.  
  
"He's going to open it. The night of the Harvest. Let loose the forces of evil on the face of earth, just like old times. Fun would be the understatement of the year." Beneath her, Jesse moaned, though it was hard to say whether he was listening to the conversation at all.  
  
"That was why she was coming here..." Angel whispered to himself, but with her sharpened senses, Darla picked up, and frowned.  
  
"Who? Who's coming here?"  
  
Angel shook his head, lost in thought. "Nobody of importance. You realize I'll try to stop you -"  
  
She laughed at that. "You can try..."  
  
With that, she threw the boy into his arms and disappeared into the night.  
  
The boy was still trembling, muttering something to himself. It sounded suspiciously like a muddled version of the Lord's Prayer. Angel vamped out, and sank his fangs into the boy's neck, taking enough blood to ensure that the youth would remember nothing about the past few minutes. Then Angel dropped the boy on a park bench, and walked silently back into the night, brooding.  
  
  
  
Sometime later, Xander and Willow walked by him on their way home. They were so busy chatting that they that they almost didn't notice Jesse asleep on the bench, but Xander finally saw him, and shouted out.  
  
"Jess," he said as they ran to the bench. "Damn, Jess, what the hell happened?"  
  
Jesse sat up, shaking his head, trying to get rid of the cobwebs. He felt as if he had been asleep for hours...  
  
"I don't know," he said softly, "I was talking to you guys, and then I left..."  
  
"With Darla," Willow filled in for him when he paused.  
  
For a moment, Jesse looked confused, then nodded slowly. "Yeah, with Darla. We walked for a minute -"  
  
Suddenly he looked fearfully at the alley across the street, his hand pointed shakily at it. Xander looked, but saw nothing but darkness.  
  
"Then....I don't remember anything else."  
  
Xander stared at his neck. "Well it looks like she left you with a parting gift. That's one goddamned nasty hicky."  
  
Jesse reached up to touch it gingerly. A bruise was forming.  
  
"Did your drink taste funny?" Willow asked him anxiously.  
  
Jesse and Xander stared at her uncomprehendingly, and Jesse shrugged. "I don't think so. Why?"  
  
"Because that's what they taught us in self-defense class. If your drink tastes weird on a date, it might be because your date put some drug in there, to, you know," she trailed off, gesturing with her hands, but the boys still seemed perplexed. "You know! You know that you know!"  
  
Xander shook his head. "I don't think she was going to rape him. I think most guys would be flattered if a woman wanted to take advantage on the first date. She makes the first move, and its like, fire up the word processor and take every detail down for Penthouse."  
  
"Then what did happen?" Willow said frustratedly.  
  
Jesse shrugged complacently. "Just my luck. She probably did make a move, and I went into cardiac arrest or something."  
  
"You feel alright to walk home?"  
  
Jesse nodded, rubbing his eyes and yawning. "Yeah, I think so. I feel like I could sleep a week."  
  
  
  
True to his word, it was nearly 10 AM by the time the alarm penetrated the haze of sleep and roused Jesse from unconciousness. He scrambled out of bed, dressed and inhaled a quick breakfast before hurrying to school.  
  
But by the time he arrived at school, it was midway through second period, and rather than trying to catch the tail end of English III, he decided to hang out and wait for lunch period.  
  
He still couldn't remember much from the night before, at least the period from the time he and Darla had left the bar to the time he had woken up on the park bench with Willow and Xander standing over him. What had come back to him came in the form of some really fucked up dreams, and even then, the images he saw were muddled and dark.  
  
One word did surface in the fog repeatedly, dredged from the blackness, etched in red like a strange sort of stoplight. The word was Vampire.  
  
After a while, he began to theorize what must have happened. He and Darla had been strolling along, perhaps too close to one of the countless dark alleys in that part of town, when they had been assaulted. Perhaps by muggers (though he had found nothing missing when he had checked his pockets at home last night). Maybe one of them had knocked him out, left him to sit on the bench, and scared Darla away. His unconcious mind, mucked up by the blow that had knocked him out, had just found a convenient label to apply to the crooks - they had been vampires. Of course it was nonsense to think that they had actually been attacked by demons, storybook creatures that had as much basis in reality as Santa Claus...  
  
But it wasn't for information on Old Saint Nick that he went to the library.  
  
When he got there, the library was deserted, as it very often was this time of day. Mrs. Gumbrecht, the ancient librarian that had been rumored to see 138 classes graduate, had finally found the gumption to hand the reigns over to new blood, a Mr. Styles or Miles or something.  
  
Jesse set his bookbag down on one of the tables... and paused. As if by some divine intervention, set out on the table, was a book, worn and corroded by age. On the cover, written in some stylish old handwriting, was a single word - Vampyre. Jesse sat down, and opened the tattered book gingerly.  
  
Most of it was stuff he already knew from the movies - crosses, holy water, garlic, sunlight, whatever. Scattered throughout the tattered pages were images, pictures of one ghastly torture or another, scenes of bloodshed from hundreds of years past.  
  
One picture leapt up at him, and he stopped flipping. It was another one of the nasties, face ridged, teeth bared, menacing another random victim. And Jesse had the strangest feeling of deja vu -  
  
The caption below read: He hath the face of an Angel, but he is the Devil's Own. Now and forevermore to be named the Scourge of Europe, hunter and hunted through eternity.  
  
Jesse found he was shaking, and took a deep breath, eyes focused on the picture. Scourge of Europe, why did it sound so familiar? And why did the picture make him so suddenly afraid? It had to be two hundred years old, and for that matter not real, so why did it feel as if he had seen the face before?  
  
There was a soft harumph behind him, and Jesse almost screamed at the sound. He turned, pale and shaking.  
  
A tall man stood a few paces behind him, dressed entirely from head to toe in tweed, wiping the glasses in his hand clean, looking vaguely uncomfortable.  
  
"Can I help -" the man started, in a British accent, before noticing the book in Jesse's hand. He reached over quickly to snatch it out. "Uhm, I'm sorry, this one's off-limits. Part of my private collection. Don't know what I was thinking, leaving it out like this."  
  
Jesse sighed, tension slowly easing out of his body.  
  
The older man looked askance at the boy. "Are you alright? I, uhm, didn't mean to startle you -"  
  
"Nah, it's alright," Jesse said, "I was just in here to...uh, to browse."  
  
The man seemed to ponder this for a moment, and Jesse wasn't sure he was buying it, but then the man nodded. "Very well. I'll be in the office if you need anything else."  
  
The older man turned to go -  
  
"Wait a sec," Jesse said. "Maybe there is something you could tell me - What do you know about vampires?"  
  
The librarian stiffened noticeably, reaching up automatically to take his glasses off and clean them again. "Well...uhm, my s-specialty isn't mythology -"  
  
Jesse looked down at his hands. "So...so they're not, uh, real, right?"  
  
The man smiled, chuckled artificially. "No, they're not."  
  
Jesse nodded, and picked up his books to leave.  
  
"Just for curosity's sake, uhm, what makes you ask?"  
  
Jesse shrugged. "Nightmares, mostly. Just wanted to see what made 'em tick."  
  
He left the library. Rupert Giles watched him go, an anxious look on his face, and then hurried back into his office.  
  
  
  
Sometime later, Giles cradled the telephone in one hand, flipping through an ancient text with the other.  
  
"Yes, yes, I am aware of the transient nature of the -" he paused, allowing the other to speak. "No, I don't think I'm overreacting. You've no idea of the kind of activity....No, Sunnydale isn't overwhelmed, not yet. But matters are coming to a head -" Giles sighed in frustration. "Very shortly. And I simply cannot believe that the activity in Cleveland would deserve the kind of attention....Convenience? Since when does convenience matter in our business?"  
  
Giles stopped flipping for a moment to stare out the window. "So that's the Council's final deliberation? Yes....yes, I'm sorry too," he finished this last with sarcasm, and slammed the phone down angrily. "Bloody fools. Bloody bureacratic popinjays."  
  
His mind wandered again to the boy whom Giles had found reading the volume of watcher's journals, and cursed himself again for leaving it out. But the boy's fright was easy enough to read - he had been terrified. Obviously he had been attacked by one of the demons. Giles didn't know why the boy was even alive - he had never heard of a vampire leaving its victim alive for any reason, but perhaps it was a sign of just how extraordinary the situation was becoming.  
  
The Slayer. He should have gone back to England, to the Council, to plead his case in person, the moment he realized she was late. But like the dutiful little Watcher, he had stayed here, waited, apparently in vain. And now he was alone. On the Hellmouth. The chain of command in the Watcher's Council dictated that he, in the field, have absolutely the least amount of decision-making power, and they categorically refused to credit his claims that the Master was here, intent on rising, the Harvest perhaps a month away.  
  
"Bloody fools," he whispered again, and sank his head into his hands. He hadn't slept well the last few weeks - strategy after useless strategy flashed endlessly in his mind, him without the weapon to wield. It was a maddeningly frustrating position, made all the more difficult by his daily encounters as a high school librarian with the youth of the town.  
  
Here came another of them, now, as the school bell rang. She was slight, red hair pulled back in a rather unflattering pigtail arrangement, glancing here and there with a shy, slightly confused expression on her delicate face. Oh, yes, he thought savagely, the demons would have fun corrupting such a one. And all like her. He closed his eyes for a moment, unable to look at the girl - fun indeed.  
  
There was a knock on the office door. He opened it to find the red- haired girl looking up at him meekly.  
  
"I hope I'm not bothering -"  
  
"No, no," he said quickly, "No interruption. Uhm, is there something I can do for you, Ms....Ms -?"  
  
"Rosenberg," the girl said, "Willow. You're M-Mr. Giles, right?"  
  
"Yes," he smiled slightly, though it was a forced and distracted motion. "Rupert Giles."  
  
She smiled slightly, too. "You posted something on the door last week, a-about an opening? For an assistant?"  
  
For a moment, still wrapped up in thoughts of the Slayer and the encroaching Harvest, he had no idea what she was referring to - then it came to him. "Yes, yes, of course. You must forgive me, I'm still acclimating myself to the, uhm, American schedule."  
  
She giggled at that.  
  
He grinned again, and this time the expression felt more natural. "Something amusing, Ms. Rosenberg?"  
  
"No, no," she said, trying to keep a straight face, "It's nothing important."  
  
"Uhm, yes," he said, though he was still perplexed. "Please, have a seat, Ms. Rosenberg."  
  
She nodded gratefully. "Call me Willow."  
  
"Then you can call me...uhm, no I take that back, I suppose you can't. Call me Giles."  
  
"Giles," she rolled it around experimently in her mouth. "Giles it is."  
  
  
  
"So how's the new librarian?"  
  
Xander sat down heavily on the sofa next to Willow, handing her a coke while taking a swig out of his own.  
  
"Fine," she said, "Kinda British, though. He said shedule. How weird is that?"  
  
Xander shrugged. "Did you get the job?"  
  
"Yeah, I think so. Didn't sound like there were a whole lot of kids scrambling for the position. Most of 'em have lives, I guess. Their loss."  
  
"Oh, come on, Will," Xander said. "You've got a life. It just happens to revolve around musty old books and musty old librarians."  
  
"Well, I don't know if I'd call him musty, exactly," Willow, and smiled a little teasingly, "I thought he was kinda cute. Just... a bit eccentric."  
  
Her expression dampened a bit. "Did you ever talk to Jesse?"  
  
He shook his head. "He never showed for first period. Sandy said he was in third period, but kinda out of it, like he was strung out or something. I hope whatever the hell it was that Darla chick spiked him with wasn't permanent."  
  
Willow was thoughtful. "He didn't look strung out last night. Just kinda....sleepy. And anyway, aren't we kinda jumping on the old conclusion bandwagon with the whole Darla-poisoned-Jesse thing? Did you actually see her put anything in his drink last night? Or discuss her evil plans alone in a deserted corner of the Bronze and then laugh maniacally?"  
  
Xander shrugged. "Well, its not like he fell asleep on that bench 'cause he needed a power nap."  
  
"Maybe he was, like, attacked or something. Mugged."  
  
"In Sunnydale?" Xander snorted derisively. "Anyway, he said himself nothing was missing. If somebody did rob him, they've got some concept problems with the whole stealing thing. Like how you're supposed to actually take something."  
  
Willow would not be put off of the scent. "Well, what about those weird marks on his neck?"  
  
Xander glanced down at her worriedly. "Yeah, that was a little scary. Looked like a bug bite or something. But have you ever heard of a bug that sucks out your memories?"  
  
Before she could answer, someone stumbled into Xander, causing him to fall into the couch. Xander got ready to yell something at the guy, until he saw who it was - his jaw dropped.  
  
"Jess?"  
  
The other boy grinned lopsidedly at both of them. "Xand-man? Howz tricks?"  
  
Xander grimaced. "Jeez, Jess, what the hell are you into?"  
  
Jesse held up the half-empty bottle of Jim Beam and lurched unsteadily around the table. "Nuthin' but the best, man, top-grade shit. Anybody seen that Darva bitch around?"  
  
He leaned into Xander, waved the other boy in closer as though he were about to whisper to him, then spoke almost loud enough for the rest of the Bronze to hear. "Really shiftin' the throttle last night," he winked broadly. "Roundin' home and headed to fourth base."  
  
The bartender strolled over to the table. "Look, I don't want to seem impolite here, but if the cops see this dude in here trashed, it won't look good on my transcript. If you catch my drift."  
  
"Drift caught," Xander acknowledged grimly, and the bartender nodded gravely. "Jess, man, you gotta sleep this off."  
  
Jesse seemed hurt. "You're gonna let that dude run us out? Who died and made him boss?"  
  
"Well," Willow said, trying to help salvage the situation. "Him being the owner kinda makes him the boss."  
  
Jesse frowned, then shrugged. "Whatever." He started out, weaving through the crowd, drawing angry looks from the people he nearly tackled. Xander and Willow rushed up to support him, one taking each arm. As they walked out, Jesse began to belt out an off-key rendition of "Lean on Me" in between mouthfuls of whiskey.  
  
  
  
"Jesus, Jess, where did you get that stuff?"  
  
"Old man's private collection. Hope he won't miss it."  
  
They staggered slowly on. As they walked farther and farther away from the Bronze, Jesse seemed to sober up quickly. In fact, Xander thought, it almost seemed as if he was getting scared.  
  
They started past the Park, near the bench where they had found Jesse asleep the night before.  
  
"Wait a sec," Jesse said waveringly. "Let's go back to the Bronze." He threw the whiskey bottle into the trash. "Come on, guys, I promise I'll be good."  
  
"No dice, Jess," Xander grunted, trying to force the boy back toward home.  
  
"But...but..." the boy slurred, glancing anxiously toward an alley across the street. "But somebody might be...followin' us."  
  
"What?" Xander stopped, and looked at the boy angrily. "What do you mean, 'following us'?"  
  
Jesse opened his mouth, but couldn't speak. His bloodshot eyes were wide and unblinking, darting here and there like a lizard's.  
  
"Jesse," Xander said seriously, shaking the boy. "What the hell happened to you last night?"  
  
"She..." he started hoarsely. "She wasn't..."  
  
"Who wasn't what?" Willow said, frightened now. "Darla? Darla wasn't what, Jesse?"  
  
"Human," said a calm, feminine voice behind them. Jesse moaned faintly. "Human might be the word he's grasping for." Xander and Willow whirled around.  
  
Darla was standing a few paces away. Two men were standing at her side, flanking her protectively like bodyguards. They were all three of them grinning ferally, fangs instead of teeth shining brightly in the moonlight, foreheads misshapen like a mountain ridge on a relief map. But the worst, Xander thought clinically, the worst were the eyes - an animal yellow, unblinking, staring not at you but through you, in you, tasting your blood, liking what they tasted.  
  
Darla started to move forward, her henchmen moving stride for stride with her. "Jess, you didn't call. I'm crushed."  
  
"So," Xander said, and he was surprised at the steadiness of his tone. He felt Willow tense beside him to run, and wanted to tell her that somehow he knew it wouldn't matter if they tried to run or not. "This is the part where you kill us, I gather?"  
  
Darla's smile widened appreciatively. "You're not as dumb as you look."  
  
And then the vampire to her left very suddenly and smoothly vanished into a cloud of dust. Xander hadn't seen the source of the creature's destruction, but Darla and the other vampire were hissing angrily at the shadows to Xander's left. He risked a glance in that direction.  
  
Another man was walking calmly out of the alley, with what appeared to be a crossbow fitted with wooden arrows in his hand.  
  
Darla didn't seem surprised to see the other. She raised her hand and pointed at him, speaking with no emotion in her voice. "Kill him."  
  
The other vampire leapt toward the man, almost too fast for Xander to track, but the shadow-man patiently tossed the crossbow aside, reaching into his black coat to retrieve a long knife - no, not a knife. It was a plain wooden stake.  
  
The vampire led with a roundhouse kick so fast and hard that Xander thought it would have taken the Karate Kid's head off. The shadow-man sidestepped it easily, swinging his own foot into the creature's back, sending it flailing to the pavement. Before it could recover, the shadow- man brought his hand down in a smooth and lightning fast motion, plunging the stake into the vampire's back. It dissolved to dust, and was born away in the breeze.  
  
Darla started to clap, though her expression was a bit less cheery then it had been a moment before. "Well done, Angel. I'm glad to see you're just as efficient in the kill as you used to be."  
  
The shadow-man...Angel, Xander thought wonderingly... said nothing, only started to walk purposefully toward her, pulling another stake out of his pocket.  
  
Darla crouched into a fighting stance. "You can't hurt me, Angel -"  
  
"No," Angel said evenly, and pointed at Xander. "But he can. All I have to do is hold you."  
  
Darla stared at him for a moment, a look of betrayal on her demonic face, and then she fled into the night.  
  
Angel watched her until she was out of sight, and then looked at the teenagers. "You alright?"  
  
Xander gaped at him. "Ah...what I mean is...ah..."  
  
"We're fine," Willow finally said. "Thank you."  
  
The stranger smirked. "You're welcome." He turned to leave.  
  
"Wait!" Willow ran after him. "You're not leaving us alone again out here, are you?"  
  
Angel shrugged. "Thought you said you were alright -"  
  
"Yeah, but what if she comes back?"  
  
He shook his head. "She won't. Trust me."  
  
"But...." Willow swallowed hard. "Does that mean she's going to....you know..."  
  
"Feed on someone else?" Angel's expression seemed to grow even more grim. "Yes, she probably is."  
  
Willow's eyes glistened, and she turned away. "That's awful -"  
  
"Would you rather it be you?"  
  
She shook her head quickly. "No, no, that's not what I meant -"  
  
"I know what you meant."  
  
Willow looked up at him. "But you could fight her. You're some kind of superhero or something."  
  
He laughed bitterly, harshly. "Not quite a superhero. But I'd kill her if I could."  
  
"Why can't you?"  
  
He glanced down as if in shame. "She's my sire."  
  
"What's that, something like a restraining order?" she said, confused. "Is she your ex-wife?"  
  
He shook his head, and then his face shifted, became ridged. Once again, Willow found herself looking into the eyes of a vampire. His voice was slightly garbled by the sharp teeth in his mouth. "No, I mean she made me."  
  
Willow jumped back, heart beating a mile a minute, but she surprised herself by not running, or screaming. Angel stared at her for a long moment, evidently as surprised as she was, and then his face shifted back to normal. When he spoke again, his voice was awed and quiet. "This is usually the part where you run away screaming."  
  
"But you saved our lives. So obviously you're not going to eat us now. I hope you're not going to eat us now -"  
  
"No, no," he said quickly. "I'm not going to hurt you."  
  
"Good," Willow said, relieved. "So...why aren't you going to eat us now?"  
  
"Would you believe it's because you don't look very tasty?"  
  
"No," she said softly, strangely offended, and then smiled. "Oh. Late picking up on the joke."  
  
He smiled thinly. "I'm not exactly your run-of-the-mill-vampire -"  
  
"Obviously," said Xander flatly, walking slowly up to stand at Willow's back. Jesse stood a few paces behind, unable to look directly at Angel. "So what's your non-biting deal?"  
  
"I used to be...not so nice a guy," Angel started hesitantly. "Evil, you might say. Kinda like her," he paused to indicate Darla, "Except worse. Anyway, I killed the wrong girl, a member of a gypsy tribe. By way of revenge, they cursed me. They gave me my soul back."  
  
Xander looked confused - what the hell kind of a roundabout punishment was that? But Willow's mouth was open, her eyes glistening again. "So you remembered all the bad things you did before, and could be ashamed for it."  
  
Angel nodded. "I haven't fed off of a human being since then."  
  
"Are there any more vampires out there like you? I mean, w-with souls?" Willow asked.  
  
Angel shook his head. "No, at least not that I know of. Must not have occurred to any other vengeful gypsy tribes."  
  
"So you're the only one... fighting against all of them?" Xander said respectfully. "Which segues nicely into my next question - Just how many of those damned things are there?"  
  
"Hundreds," Angel replied gravely.  
  
"In the world? I guess that's not too bad -"  
  
"No. Hundreds in Sunnydale."  
  
Xander paled and reached for Willow's hand in the darkness. It was cold and trembling in his. "So how come we just found out about it? Are we the only humans who know?"  
  
"No. The majority of humanity is kept in the dark, pardon the pun," Angel smirked humorlessly. "But there are...a few that do know. And do fight. One of them..." he trailed off, as if the rest of his thoughts were too painful to put into words.  
  
"What?" Willow asked him anxiously. "One of them what?"  
  
"One of them...was supposed to be here. To help me fight. And she's not."  
  
"Why Sunnydale? Why the mass infestation in our sleepy little burg?"  
  
Angel frowned. "It's...it's hard to explain. I'm not sure I know all the details. It's got something to do with the Master. The head vampire," he said as he saw their confusion at the reference. "Over five hundred years old. Very powerful. He was...an acquaintance of mine, pre-soul. We're not each other's biggest fans nowadays. Darla works for him now, apparently."  
  
"Why haven't we seen him around? Or any of them, for that matter?"  
  
"I'm not exactly sure. The vampires have been laying low for a while in this town. And I haven't even seen the Master yet. Something tells me that he's not here of his own volition. Or at least he hasn't stuck around because he appreciated the high property values," he paused for a moment, waiting for a laugh, at least a smile, but the other two were stone-faced and grim. "He's stuck here, for some reason. For a while. Anyway, there is something, something about this place, that attracts the demons. I can feel it. I just can't...I can't place it," he finished, and looked down at the ground. "Except that it's underground."  
  
"So without this girl here, the one that was gonna help you, how are you going to stop this head-vampire-guy?" Xander mused. "Apparently the direct attack isn't an option. Though by all outward appearances your ass- kicking abilities leave little to be desired."  
  
"You're right," Angel said seriously, then saw the other two's slight grins, "I mean about the fact that I can't take the Master down by myself. I'm gonna need help -"  
  
"We can help." Willow said.  
  
Xander and Angel both gaped at her.  
  
"Will," Xander said increduously, "Not to burst your little volunteer- bubble there, but we can help this guy about as much as Jimmy Olsen helped Superman," Angel stared at him strangely. "That means we wouldn't be much help."  
  
Angel turned back to Willow. "I hate to agree with your friend's weird little comic-book analogy, but you can only get in the way. I don't mean to be insulting, but the Master would swat you like flies."  
  
"Well, I don't mean we jump in and do the -" she paused and made little chopping motions with her hands, "-the karate thing like you do, but we could be sideline-guys. You know, root, root, root for the home team. We could help you research the Master. You know, somebody once said, to defeat your enemy, you must first know him -"  
  
"It was Tse-tsu." Angel said patiently.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Tse-tsu. That was his quote."  
  
Xander looked at him cock-eyed. "Is this the part of the conversation where you tell us you knew him, that you were sitting on the porch sipping tea when he leaned over and said 'Angel, I was sitting over here sipping my tea when the thought occured to me, to defeat your enemy, you must first -'"  
  
"No."  
  
Xander started to say something sarcastic in reply, but Willow elbowed him in the stomach.  
  
Angel turned away from them for a moment, staring into space. "If you did try to help - your lives would never be the same. I mean you wouldn't be able to just leave this alone -"  
  
"Trust me, the whole life-changing moment thing, already past it," Willow tried to joke, but it came out too slow and serious. "If it means the difference between everybody being safe and...not, then I'll do what I can do."  
  
"Aw," Xander said reluctantly. "Wellllll...I guess...I just can't let Will go out there all alone -"  
  
"Don't do it because of me, Xander. Do it because you want to."  
  
Xander swallowed hard, but stared Angel resolutely in the eyes. "Count me in, Soul-man."  
  
Angel glanced over their shoulders, in Jesse's direction. The boy was still was sitting on the ground behind them, swaying and staring palely at the concrete below, nearly oblivious to his surroundings. "What about him?"  
  
"He's drunk," Xander said, though the tone of his voice told them that he thought his best friend would need more than a cup of coffee and a few hours rest to recover. "Give him some time. I think he'll help, too."  
  
Angel just nodded.  
  
"So that's it?" Willow said expectantly. "No secret club handshake? No complimentary t-shirt?"  
  
This time, she drew a chuckle from the vampire. "'Fraid not. Though we do offer a generous retirement package," he paused, and looked at them somberly. "You aren't the only ones we'll need. To defeat the Master, we'll need a coordinated effort from more then just a handful."  
  
"Oh, Jeez," Willow said, feeling inexplicably embarassed. "I don't think I could ask anybody I know to do something like this -"  
  
"No, no, that's not quite what I meant. I already know of a few who would be ready and willing to join our side. I think you already met one of them."  
  
"Who?" Willow said, perplexed.  
  
  
  
"Giles," the librarian said, reaching forward to shake Xander's hand. "Rupert Giles. You can call me -"  
  
"Giles, Giles, got it," Xander acknowledged quickly, returning the handshake.  
  
The librarian nodded. "Alright, then. Uhm, Willow, you wanted to have a word with me?"  
  
Willow nodded. "Yeah. I hope this doesn't sound too strange. Last night...me and Xander were walking home from the Bronze, w-when, we were...attacked. By a....a vampire."  
  
For a moment, Giles simply stared at her, eyes widened, mouth slightly open, muscles tense and stiff. Then he tried to melt into a reassuring smile, which didn't fool either of the teenagers for a moment. "Perhaps I'm not accustomed yet to the, uhm, American nomenclature. By vampire, you mean -?"  
  
"Bloodsucker. Dracula-type. With the I-never-drink-wine?"  
  
Giles nodded slowly. "I'm afraid you must be mistaken. There is no room in science for such a creature -"  
  
"Look, we can move past the secrecy thing, already," Xander said impatiently. "We know what we saw. And we know that you know what we saw. Or something like that."  
  
Giles took a step back, pulling his glasses off to clean them. When he put them back on, his face was more natural, less phonily cheery. "Alright. How did you know I knew?"  
  
Xander opened his mouth, but Willow beat him to the chase. "From a very reliable, and presently anonymous, source."  
  
Giles looked at them askance. "How anonymous?"  
  
"Very anonymous. John Doe-anonymous."  
  
"Alright," Giles replied, drawing the word carefully. "What am I supposed to do about these vampires?"  
  
Willow and Xander looked at each other. "We were hoping you would tell us."  
  
"Uhm-hmm," Giles said, unconvinced. "And this...Mr. Doe, he is an ally?"  
  
"Oh, yeah. Friendly. Gets his kicks staking vampires. Definitely of the ally variety."  
  
Giles turned away, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "How much do you and Mr. Doe know?"  
  
"We know...something about the Master," Giles started at that. "But we don't know where he is. Or why he hasn't shown his...uhm, fangy face."  
  
"I know why," Giles said quietly. They gazed at him expectantly. "He's stuck here."  
  
"That's what...uh, John thought. Why is he stuck?"  
  
"Fifty years ago," Giles explained. "The Master attempted to o-open a...hole, to Hell, to set loose on the world the same demons and creatures which ruled the Earth billions of years ago. Fortunately, a f-freak earthquake disrupted the ritual, closing the hole and trapping the Master in the caverns beneath Sunnydale."  
  
"So why the large unhappiness now? If he's stuck -"  
  
"The Master will not stay stuck for long," he paled slightly. "The...H-Harvest is coming."  
  
"The Harvest?" Xander asked. "I'm gonna take a leap here and guess that it's not a harvest of the good, agricultural kind that we're talking about here."  
  
Giles paused only a moment to give the boy a strange look. "Y-yes, well, you're quite correct. On the night of the Harvest, the Master can appoint one, uhm, representative to leave the caverns. To go out and...feed for him. If this...v-vessel feeds on enough victims, the Master will be set free."  
  
"Jesus," Xander said seriously. "This is..." he couldn't quite finish the thought.  
  
Willow spoke up softly. "And...and how do you k-know about all of this?"  
  
"I..." Giles started hoarsely, and swallowed. "I...used to be... someone. In a position to understand such things as these, which most people do not."  
  
Xander was puzzled. "But now -"  
  
"Now I'm a librarian," Giles said quickly, bitterly, "Who happens to know that one of the most infamous demons in history is about to be set loose on the world again. And I can do nothing about it."  
  
"But we've got to do something. We c-can't just...I mean..." but Willow didn't know how to finish the thought.  
  
Giles started to reshelve some books, slamming them into their places as hard as he could. "We can do what? All Jane and John Does aside, the Master would swat us like flies."  
  
"That's the same thing Ang-... John said," Willow said in a small voice. Giles whirled around to look at her, then turned more slowly back to his books.  
  
"Yes...well," Giles said sadly. "My best advice to you both, since you do know and there's nothing that will change that, is to take your families and leave Sunnydale. Immediately. And don't come back."  
  
"That's it?" Willow asked increduously, "That's your best advice? To just...abandon our town? We grew up here, this is our home."  
  
Giles spoke without turning around. "I might remind you that this was his home long before it was yours -"  
  
"That's not the point, and you know it," she said angrily. Xander was watching her as if he had never seen her before. "You want us to leave without a fight? That means he wins! Is that what you want?"  
  
"Of course not," Giles meant to say it firmly, but it sounded weak and troubled even to his own ears. "I meant that -"  
  
"I know what you meant," she interrupted, more calmly, "And it amounts to the same thing. Holding up the little white flag."  
  
Giles said nothing. He stopped shelving books, simply stood silently on the level above them, hunched over, as if in pain.  
  
"What about everyone else in Sunnydale, Giles?" Willow's voice was starting to tremble, but she spoke through the tears. "What happens to the people who don't know? How can you leave with the knowledge that the people you're leaving behind will have nothing between them and the darkness when the Master rises?"  
  
Giles mumbled something too soft for the two of them to hear.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I said I'm not leaving," Giles repeated gruffly. His voice was many years older then his age. "I'm staying. To fight."  
  
"By yourself?" Willow asked incredulously. "You can't do that -"  
  
"I can, and I will," Giles said sadly. "It's the least I can do -"  
  
"Then it's the least we can do," Xander said firmly. Willow looked at him proudly, and he shrugged. "Hey, I couldn't let you two take all the hero lines."  
  
Giles finally turned to look at them, pleadingly. "I can't ask you...I won't let you risk your lives -"  
  
"You don't have to," Willow said. "We're going to fight the Master anyway. With or without your help."  
  
Giles shook his head, and smiled sadly. "You have no idea what you're getting yourselves into -"  
  
"That's where you and Will come in. You're the Research Duo, while me and John are out kicking undead ass, taking undead names," Willow gave him glare, and he wilted slightly. "Well, mostly John....90% John. Maybe 95%," Willow continued to stare. "Hey, I can act as a tasty bait. That's got to be worth something, right? Gimme the 5 percentage points!" 


	3. Ch.2 - Drastic Measures

Chapter Two - Drastic Measures  
  
Xander shuffled home, alone, glancing here and there, trying to look nervous. Considering how nervous he actually was, it wasn't hard.  
  
"Look at me," he said softly to the darkness, "Poor, defenseless me, walking the walk of the innocent and untroubled. Tasty and unspoiled, that's me. Definitely not a trap, nope, no way. Not into the whole bait thing. Just walking home slowly, uh...unarmed. Pretty harmless. Did I mention the whole tasty thing?"  
  
Angel had wanted Willow to be the bait, much to her obvious discomfort, but Giles had made her stay behind to control the technological side of research. For being a librarian in twentieth century high school, he seemed to know next to nothing about computers. Back in the relative safety of the library, it had seemed like the gallant thing to do for Xander to volunteer for bait duty. Now it just sounded utterly stupid.  
  
"Don't try to be heroic," Angel had warned him, "At the first sign of trouble, back off. I can handle it."  
  
That had also gone under the category of things that sound cool in the well-lit library, but which lose their coolness when you're alone in the dark. In fact, when Xander stopped babbling nervously to himself, when he tried to listen over the hammering roar of his heartbeat, he could swear he heard footsteps. From behind him. And not comfortably behind him. They were almost at his shoulder -  
  
He whirled around to find...nothing. A dark and scary nothing, which really didn't help much. If he could just see whatever he was supposed to be the bait for, he could at least decide whether to stand his ground or run away, shrieking like a girl. Come to think of it -  
  
A pair of cold hands grabbed him from behind, smooth and hard like granite, and very suddenly he was in the air, thrown over the vamp's shoulder as if he weighed nothing. He hit the ground hard and felt the air leave his body in a painful rush. Of course he would have it back in a moment, would be up and ready to fight, but Xander didn't think the vampire would give him that moment -  
  
And then Angel was standing over him, motioning for him to stay down, vamp face on. He snarled at the other vampire, who snarled back, and they leapt at each other. The other vampire was apparently not a newbie - he actually held his ground. For a few seconds. But Angel didn't seem to mind the fight. In fact, maybe it was a figment of his slightly dazed mind, but it seemed to Xander as if Angel enjoyed taking his time in staking the other vamp. Xander closed his eyes, climbed slowly to his feet, shaking his head to clear away the dizziness, and when he turned back, Angel was alone. A cloud of dust that once might have been a person swirled away in the darkness.  
  
"Alright," Xander said hoarsely. "Fine work. But is there any way we could do this where there's less of me being thrown all over the place? It's not exactly the flying through the air that bothers me," he grimaced, gingerly rubbing his sore shoulder. "It's the hitting the ground part that hurts."  
  
Angel smirked one of his patented little smirks, the ones that were rapidly getting on Xander's nerves. "Hey, this me-hero, you-bait thing isn't set in stone. If you wanna be the one to fight the vampires -"  
  
"No, no," Xander said quickly. "Just...uh, just keep up the good work. Maybe just a tad faster on the offensive, though."  
  
Angel looked around, sniffing the air. "I think that's all of them. Tonight, anyway."  
  
They started to walk back toward the library.  
  
"So..." Xander said, his voice very loud in the midnight silence. "Uh...how long have you been at it?"  
  
"At what?"  
  
"This," Xander said. "This whole...soul thing. Giles said the history books say you haven't been the 'Scourge of Europe' for-"  
  
"For 99 years," Angel finished stonily. "Though it was quite a while after that before I decided to get off my sorry ass and do something with the hand I was dealt."  
  
"Uh-huh," Xander said, stepping slightly away from the vampire at the tone of his voice. They walked in silence for a few minutes more. When Xander spoke again, his voice was hushed, almost a whisper. "This is hopeless, isn't it?"  
  
Angel turned toward him sharply. "What's hopeless?"  
  
Xander waved around at the night. "This. Killing three or four vampires a night? When there are hundreds out there already?"  
  
"We're keeping the balance. That's not hopeless. That's essential."  
  
"But what about when the Master shows up? We're just holding our own as it is -"  
  
"That's why we've got to stop him before he does rise again," Angel started to walk again.  
  
"Do you think you can stop him?"  
  
Angel couldn't look in Xander's direction. He kept his unblinking eyes trained forward. "I...it doesn't matter what I think. If I can stop him, then I will."  
  
"And what if you can't?"  
  
Angel shrugged, though it seemed to sap a lot of his strength just to lift his shoulders.  
  
  
  
Willow nodded off in front of one of the computers.  
  
They had spent three hours looking into the Watcher's Diaries that Giles had stashed safely in his office. It had all added up to a great, wide nothing. Willow couldn't help feeling useless, just sitting here, while Angel and Xander went out to actually accomplish something. Besides which, Giles had told her he had already been through most of these volumes before, when he had first learned of the Master's presence in Sunnydale. So what the hell were they doing in here? Giles had claimed it to be important in the long-run, though he had started to look pretty restless himself in the last half-hour or so...  
  
Xander walked into the library. Angel was nowhere to be seen, and when she glanced around, Willow realized that, mysteriously, Giles had left the library, as well. Perhaps it's for the best, some naughty little part of her said craftily. Then Xander took off his shirt. Definitely for the best. She smiled, closed her eyes, as he strode boldly toward her, swept her into his arms, spoke soft words into her ears...  
  
"Miss Rosenberg?" he said in a British accent. She opened one eye to gaze at Xander in puzzlement. He smiled back at her.  
  
"Miss Rosenberg? Are you awake?"  
  
She sat up quickly at the sound of Giles' voice at her side, and blinked the sleep away. "Awake. Yes. The Master. Rising. Bad things."  
  
Giles smiled slightly. "Go home, Miss Ros-...uhm, Willow. It's nearly 1 AM."  
  
She nodded gratefully. "You're leaving too?"  
  
The smile waned slightly. "Uhm...yes, right behind you. May I offer you a ride home?"  
  
"Uh...sure. Just let me get my things together."  
  
Xander walked into the library. Willow's heart leapt for a moment, shocked by deja vu - the feeling ended when she realized he was nearly leaning against Angel in exhaustion. Xander yawned a long, deep yawn, his eyelids somewhere around his chin.  
  
"Thought I was a night kind of a guy," he said sleepily, then glanced over somberly at Angel. "Maybe not."  
  
"Xander, Willow," Giles said to the teens, though he was looking at Angel expectantly. "Uhm...why don't you go wait by the car - I'll be along in a moment."  
  
Xander and Willow took the cue and walked out of the library quietly.  
  
"I don't wish to dance around this," Giles started after the door closed behind them, "any more then you do, I think. How are you doing? Uhm, out there?"  
  
"I don't know how well I'm doing," Angel replied earnestly. "I don't know how to judge. If I say I'm making a dent in the... population, then what does that mean? Xander asked me the same question, and I gave him this - we're killing three or four nearly every night. If we assume that that's how many the Master and his minions are making, then we're breaking even. Xander seemed to think that it was hopeless. Is that what you think?"  
  
Giles turned away from the vampire. "I don't know what to think, either. The Harvest is not moving any further away, for all of our efforts. And we seem to be no closer to finding where the Master is then we were a few weeks ago."  
  
"Then we have to step up the effort," Angel said plainly, firmly, though it almost seemed as if he was even paler then he had been a moment before. "We fight darkness...with darkness."  
  
  
  
The vampire never saw it coming. He was young, so young that he could not bring the demon off of his face. He followed Giles back into an alley, coincidentally the same one where, a few weeks before, Darla and Angel had wrangled over Jesse's fate. In the back of the alley Angel sat, waiting patiently with the tranquilizer gun in hand.  
  
Now the vampire was trussed up in the corner of Giles' living room, snapping and snarling like a caged dog. Giles sat on his couch, a troubled look on his face, a double shot of bourbon in his left hand, trying in vain to shut the noise of the raging demon out of his head.  
  
Angel watched him sadly for a few moments, then walked to his side, pointing at the cross on the table in front of him.  
  
Giles looked up at the vampire. "What?"  
  
"The cross. You'll have to do it. I can't touch it."  
  
Giles stared uncomprehendingly for a moment, then nodded. "Of c- course, how stupid of me."  
  
He picked up the cross, and walked woodenly to the vampire, who shuddered at the sight of the cross.  
  
"Uhm..." Giles played with the cross nervously, unsure of how to begin. "Tell us where the M-Master is."  
  
The vampire cackled hideously. "Never, mortal scum. The Harvest is upon us. The great and powerful -" Giles waved the cross closer to the demon's face. "Alright, alright, Jeez, watch it with that thing. He's in the tunnel system."  
  
Giles brought the cross closer.  
  
"Corner of fifth and main! Lay off me, why dontcha?"  
  
Giles glanced expectantly back at Angel, who calmly and subtly shook his head.  
  
"You're lying," Giles said, turning back to the demon.  
  
The vampire glared at Giles. "You know what the Master'd do to me if I told you the truth? Make whatever you're gonna do to me look like, hey, surprise birthday party."  
  
Angel stepped forward.  
  
The vampire grinned up at him nastily. "Yeah, fuck you too, you poor neutered son-of-a-bitch. Master's told us all about you and the gypsies," the vampire tried to affect a look of pity, though there was sarcasm in his tone. "Real drag, dude."  
  
"So you know me."  
  
"Yeah, I know you."  
  
Angel vamped out. "And you know my reputation."  
  
The grin faded a bit from the other vampire's face. "You were a sadistic torturer who murdered countless thousands in a reign of terror that lasted for a century and a half. Yeah, you're like our Michael Jordan, man."  
  
Angel nodded. "So tell me...what kind of torture did I enjoy doling out the most?"  
  
The other vampire reflected for a moment. "The Master told us that you...uh, that you...you liked to break the bones first. Said you liked the sound it made."  
  
"Uh-huh. Go on."  
  
Giles sat down, picked up his bourbon, and downed half of it in a single swig.  
  
"He said...you were fond of acid. Liked to burn the extremities off."  
  
"Yeah," Angel said, his voice hollow and empty. "Any more?"  
  
The vampire was starting to sweat anxiously. "I don't know, man. Where's this goin', anyway? You gonna try that shit on me?" The vampire tried to smile, though it came out as more of a pained grimace. "Bring it on, tough guy."  
  
"I could try that stuff," Angel said calmly, switching back to his human face. "But I've tortured demons before. That stuff you mentioned works pretty well on humans, but sometimes to get to the demons you've got to resort to more drastic measures."  
  
"Drastic measures," the vampire said, trembling noticeably. "Drastic measures means what?"  
  
Angel said nothing, simply backed out of the room, into the adjoining kitchenette. There was a silence for a moment - then a ping that the vampire didn't recognize for a moment. When he finally did remember what the noise was, he was more confused.  
  
It was the sound of the microwave timer running out.  
  
"Drastic measures," Angel said thoughtfully as he came back in, hand behind his back.  
  
The vampire watched him anxiously. "What you got, there, Angel-face?"  
  
Angel leaned down into the other's face - the vampire flinched, trying to prepare himself for whatever punishment was coming.  
  
Angel brought his hand around - in it was a mug. Steam rose out of the contents, waving lazily in the gentle night breeze. The contents of the mug were red - the vampire sniffed delicately, found that it was blood.  
  
"That's it, man?" the vampire tried to smile, though his mouth began to water. "That's the b-best you can do?"  
  
"Oh, I or the librarian could probably think of something more...elaborate, perhaps faster, to get the information we need," Angel smirked, spoke sarcastically, "but this is the only way my poor, soul- ridden conscience will be at ease."  
  
Angel walked slowly around the room. The vampire followed the mug around with yellow, hungry eyes.  
  
"You were sired, what," Angel said, looking the vampire up and down appraisingly. "Three days ago?"  
  
"Two," the vampire said distractedly, unconciously tugging at his bonds.  
  
"Two days ago," Angel calculated placidly. "Means tonight was your first night out. No wonder you walked into the alley so blindly."  
  
The vampire growled, though he was still looking at the mug.  
  
"Bet you want this real bad," Angel baited mercilessly. "It's probably about body temperature now. Took it off of a young lady coming out of the metroplex tonight, so it might as well be fresh brewed. Only the best."  
  
Very suddenly the vampire screamed, leapt out at Angel, who watched him without flinching. The chains strained, but held.  
  
"Now, wait a minute," Angel said, icily pleasant. "Don't be rude to the host. You give us the information, the Master's whereabouts, and we give you this mug. And who knows, maybe the rest of the girl waiting for me upstairs."  
  
It was enough. The vampire spoke, though his words could barely be understood as English. "Alright, you asshole, the Master's hiding beneath the school. Beneath the library."  
  
Giles started abruptly at the words. The glass of bourbon, half- drunk, fell out of his suddenly nerveless hands, splashing across the rug.  
  
Angel regarded the other vampire, reduced now to a quivering mass of appetite. He hesitated for a moment before holding the mug close enough for the vampire to drink. The demon accepted it eagerly...and then disappeared in a flash of light and dust.  
  
Angel threw the mug disdainfully into the sink, and walked back into the living room. "He was so young he didn't even smell the holy water."  
  
Giles didn't look up, and Angel doubted he had heard. "My God," he said hauntedly, "the school."  
  
  
  
The Master sat contentedly in his underground chambers, lounging with his feet slung lazily over the arm of his chair, contemplating his latest meal. Luke's tastes were obviously improving under his tutelage - the girl he had brought for dinner tonight was obviously a strong one, hot-blooded and fierce, though she was steadily beginning to wilt under the Master's unblinking gaze. Her dark hair gleamed dully in the flickering candlelight, the picture of victimhood, save only for the eyes, full of fear and anger in admirably equal proportions. He thought that she would make an excellent minion.  
  
"I'd appreciate it if you would stop staring at me like that," he said evenly, "Not exactly proper vampire ettiquette, I'm afraid."  
  
"Yeah, well, where I come from, it's not exactly proper ettiquette to eat someone."  
  
Luke growled at his side at her insilence, but the Master chuckled. Fluidly, he got up from his throne to stalk slowly around her.  
  
"What's your name?"  
  
She continued to follow him with her eyes. "Jenny. What's yours?"  
  
He stopped for a moment, somewhat surprised. "You know...nobody's asked me that in quite a while." He thought hard for a moment. "I'm not sure I quite recall. Got used to everyone just calling me Master, or Sire, or what have you. You know these servile types," he gestured disparagingly in Luke's general direction. "Not much of a chance to get personal these days, I'm afraid."  
  
Tears began to well in her eyes again, and he cursed to himself. Just when he thought she might last a while.  
  
"Child," he said tenderly. "What makes you so afraid?"  
  
She turned away from him, fear beginning to overtake resistance in her eyes. "You do. He does," she nodded in Luke's direction. "But you're not as scary as that is." She turned to an empty cavern, unlit. "Darkness is scarier."  
  
He nodded, understanding completely, sympathizing, even.  
  
She tried to be defiant again. "So do whatever you want with me."  
  
The Master began to walk around her again, slowly, closing in almost imperceptibly. "Luke knows me better then I know myself, I believe. Not only does he bring to me a deliciously beautiful meal, but a worthy servant as well."  
  
Finally the fear sparkled fully in her eyes. "What do you mean?"  
  
A slow grin enveloped his hideous face as he turned to regard the darkness of the empty cavern. "You say you are frightened of the darkness? Soon you will be the darkness. You will never be afraid of anything again." He turned back to her. "Don't you see -"  
  
She was ignoring him - in fact she had closed her eyes, and was mumbling something to herself.  
  
He whirled to stare venomously at Luke, who cowered, confused at his Master's furious gaze. "You brought a -" he started, but was interrupted when the room was filled with a blinding light. The rest of the vampires in the room screamed, fooled for a moment into thinking that somehow the woman had brought the hated light of the sun into their home. The Master was not fooled; however, his eyes were blinded for a moment, and when he could see again, she was gone.  
  
He strode purposefully back toward his throne, where Luke trembled in fear.  
  
"You brought a witch into my presence," the Master seethed icily.  
  
"Master, I..." Luke said timidly. "I...could not have known she was a witch... She seemed..."  
  
The Master held up one bony, gnarled finger. "No excuses, Luke. I want her found. I want her brought back to me," he tone turned tender again, though it was a false and chilling tenderness. "After your many years of loyal service, this one mistake can be overlooked. Consider it a warning, my childe."  
  
The Master leaned back in his throne patiently. "You will not receive another."  
  
  
  
Jenny Calendar groped her way madly out of the sewer system, searching desperately for a way out. Behind her she could hear the snarling and skittering of her pursuers, close, perhaps close enough for them to hear the terribly loud sound of her fluttering heartbeat. She calmed herself enough to throw down a quick baffle spell, though she doubted it would give her more then a few minutes of protection. What she needed was a way up, but the only way the alleys and junctions seemed to lead was away, parallel to the surface and deeper into the caverns.  
  
Finally, just as she thought the vampires were beginning to lock onto her scent, she found a ladder in the darkness - above it she could see the outline of a manhole cover in the twilight. She climbed gratefully toward it like a swimmer nearly out of oxygen approaching the water's surface.  
  
She pushed against the heavy manhole cover - for a moment it wouldn't budge, and she was terrified that she would be trapped down here, the vampires closing in, only a few inches from salvation. But then with an echoing screech it began to give. She strained against it, and was out of the sewer.  
  
Cold air swirled around her as she emerged, and she was surprised to find that the sun had set while she had been in the caverns. She got to her feet, trying to brush off some of the crud and dirt from the sewer, and didn't see the Citreon coming down the street toward her. It swerved to avoid her, and rolled over onto the sidewalk.  
  
She ran toward it as the driver, an older man dressed in tweed and slightly graying at the temples, climbed out, reaching up to wipe his glasses off.  
  
"Are you alright?"  
  
He surveyed his car quickly, and nodded. "Yes, yes, I believe so. I might have -" he turned to her, and his eyes widened. "Oh, Miss Calendar, uhm, I didn't recognize you for a moment."  
  
For a moment she didn't recognize him, either, then realized with a start that it was the new librarian, Rupert Giles. They had been introduced at one faculty get-together or another - she remembered he had been rather reserved (even for a Brit, a few of whom she had known in the past), with a halting pattern of speech, and she recalled that she hadn't been impressed by him much at all, just another foppish bookworm, as musty as some of the oldest books in the library. Indeed she couldn't remember ever seeing him again after the first introduction, though as the computer teacher, she didn't have much occasion to visit the library anyway.  
  
Apparently the last few months had not been good to him. He looked worn out, a little grizzled - the suit he was wearing seemed a size too big for him, as if he had lost weight. With a little inward smile, she realized that she probably looked nearly as bad.  
  
He glanced past her at the open sewer manhole.  
  
"Uhm," he started, choosing his words carefully. "Is there something...with which I might be of assistance?"  
  
She shook her head, started to reply, when a little knot of vampires struggled out of the sewer, growling at the sight of her. Giles pulled her away roughly, backpedalling, at the same time reaching into his pocket to pull out...  
  
A cross. She nearly laughed in relief. The vampires cowered away from it, but moved to surround the two of them.  
  
"Car," Giles said simply, pointing over his shoulder. "Better hurry. This little thing won't keep them all off for long."  
  
She hurried to the Citreon, and climbed in across the front seat, Giles just behind her. He started the engine and sped off just as the demons were grasping hungrily for the door handles. One of them was caught in front of the car - he ran it over without a second's worth of hesitation, and it fell into dust as the Citreon squealed away.  
  
Giles drove without a word or a glance, his unblinking eyes glued to the road in front of them as if he expected a dozen more of them to pop up before their eyes. Finally after he had driven a mile or more he began to relax.  
  
"Now," he began, and it was back to the same old dry librarian. Jenny felt unnacountably disappointed for the change. "Uhm, you may not believe what you just saw. They were v-vampires. I know -"  
  
"I know what they were, Rupert. I already knew they were here."  
  
He looked at her for a moment, his mouth open slightly. "You knew? How...I mean, if you knew -"  
  
"Teaching computer ed is my day job. By night I'm Batwoman."  
  
He looked confused for a moment, and she began to laugh. It was a nervous kind of a laughter, a tension reliever, and when she stopped chuckling she felt much better.  
  
"I'm a techno-pagan. But anybody with even the least amount of power has got to feel something seriously weird in this town," It was not exactly the truth - she hadn't arrived in Sunnydale on a whim, or by accident. She had a job to do. But Rupert Giles didn't need to know that.  
  
"Oh," he said softly. "I-I see."  
  
"How did you know what they were?"  
  
He appeared greatly discomforted by her question. "I...I mean, myself and a f-few others in Sunnydale...are trying to stop them from taking over the town. It was necessity, I'm afraid. There is...something wrong with this t-town..."  
  
"You mean the Hellmouth?"  
  
This time he couldn't keep the surprise from his face. "What else do you know?"  
  
She grinned. "I can tell you how to get to the Master."  
  
And by the time they had pulled into her driveway, she had finished her story, and he was smiling, too.  
  
  
  
Xander and Willow were waiting for Giles when he arrived at the library the next morning, he sharpening a stake, she staring blankly at the computer.  
  
"Morning," Giles said distractedly, setting his briefcase on the counter. "I've got news."  
  
Neither of them looked up. "Of the good?" Xander said bitterly, intent on the piece of wood he was whittling.  
  
"Yes, very good news. I -" he stopped. They both had bloodshot eyes - Xander's face was locked in a grimace of hate and pain, and Willow seemed to be trying not to cry. "What's happened?"  
  
Willow began to sob into her hands.  
  
"They got Jesse," Xander said without looking at Giles. "His parents found him this morning. Pernicious anemia." He threw the unfinished stake to the floor. "The doctors said it was pernicious anemia."  
  
"God," Giles said, all the elation he had felt from Jenny's story gone in an instant. "I'm...s-sorry."  
  
Xander picked up the stake, twirled it in his fingers like an expensive cigar. "The only thing I can think about -" he swiped violently downward in a staking motion -"is how much fun it'll be to put this through her chest -" swipe -"watch her dissolve and scatter like just so much smoke -" swipe "-but I'm afraid that Jesse'll be the one in the way." swipe, though it was half-hearted and trembling. "That I'll have to do him first. I don't think I can."  
  
Willow walked slowly to him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Giles backed away quietly, into his office, leaving the two of them alone.  
  
  
  
Angel patrolled the town, alone. He preferred it this way - as much as he had to admit having the Xander boy with him was helping, it eased his mind to know that the only life he was risking out here was his own. Besides which, the boy would probably be back out within the week, as soon as he could overcome his grief and anger enough to be a useful part of the hunt. That was not Xander's judgement to make - of course, he wanted to be out here tonight, but to go half-cocked and reckless with guilt and anger was not the way to defeat the Master. So Angel came alone.  
  
Willow and Xander both seemed to be content to suffer in silence, or at least between themselves, at a distance from the adults. Angel had not been human for more than 200 years, but he retained the ability to feel that they were not coping well. Normally he thought they would have been able to deal with the loss, even one so staggering as the loss of a best friend. But the method in which the boy had died had been anything but normal. He sensed that they would not be at peace until they knew that he was really dead. Until they could be sure that, on some dark and lonely night, Jesse wouldn't come back for them.  
  
Which was why, when Angel did spot the fledgeling demon that had once been Jesse Turturo, standing over the prone body of another youth, he moved forward to make the kill.  
  
Before he could get to the boy, there was a sharp whistle in the darkness, and Jesse whirled around, blood splattered across his demonic face.  
  
"Angel," the boy said through a mouthful of teeth, "Friend! Buddy! I was hoping I'd see you tonight," his expression tried to feign sincerity, though it really didn't work. "I really have to thank you."  
  
"Thank me?" Angel said increduously. "Thank me for what?"  
  
"This," the boy smiled, pointing at his deformed face. "Helping me see things in perspective. You introduced me to your world."  
  
"Don't try to blame this on me. Darla -"  
  
"Oh, Darla may have finished it, but you were the one that showed me the light, as it were. As messy an image as that is."  
  
Angel was speechless for a moment. "She was going to kill you that night."  
  
"How do you know that?"  
  
"I..." but he didn't know.  
  
"But don't worry. I'm living the high unlife, now."  
  
Angel's face set itself like stone. "I didn't bring you into this world, boy, and I pity you that you were. But I'll bring you out of it."  
  
He advanced, stake drawn and poised to strike. The boy didn't move, and the smile never left his face. Angel came within striking distance, began to bring the stake down...  
  
And Darla stepped in between them. An invisible force halted his hand, midway down. He struggled with it for a moment, but realized that it was totally useless, and backed a few paces away.  
  
"Angel, my childe," Darla spoke, and he shuddered at her tone. "You shouldn't treat Jesse like that. He's family, after all."  
  
Jesse began to run his fangs lightly over the side of her neck, and she hissed in pleasure. "You and he are like brothers," she said, dreamily.  
  
They turned to leave. Jesse looked back over his shoulder.  
  
"Oh, yeah, tell Xand and Wills hey for me. Or don't, I don't care. I'll be seeing them soon enough, anyway."  
  
  
  
Angel walked in to the library at nearly 1 AM. Giles sat, poring over a journal, the opera Carmen playing softly in the background - Jenny Calendar was asleep in his arms. Angel tapped him on the shoulder, and they crept into the office.  
  
"Where are the others?" Angel asked as Giles closed the door.  
  
Giles glanced over the scattered papers on his desk, looking for one of the journals. "They, uhm, they went home. I don't believe either of them has b-been sleeping particularly well of late."  
  
Angel looked over the librarian appraisingly. "You don't look so well yourself. Are you sure -"  
  
"I'll be fine," Giles said crossly, stacking some of the loose papers together and stuffing them into the file cabinet beside his desk. "Any news tonight?"  
  
"No news. I only killed two tonight. They're laying even lower now than they were."  
  
Giles nodded. "With the Harvest approaching the Master will want to keep a low profile. Lord knows they'll make up for it when he does rise."  
  
"If he rises. Giles, we have got to take the fight to him."  
  
Giles began to pace the room, rubbing his glasses. "Yes, I know. And you can't defeat him alone. Not on his terms."  
  
"And I can't touch Darla."  
  
"I can fight," Giles said stonily. "If it comes to that...I can fight her."  
  
Angel frowned. "As much as I appreciate the offer, we'll need someone else."  
  
But Giles was shaking his head fiercely. "No, no, absolutely not. We cannot ask them to -"  
  
"Shouldn't they be the ones to decide?"  
  
"No," Giles said. "I don't think so at all. They're only sixteen years old. In high school."  
  
"She's sixteen years old. And in high school. She would have fought."  
  
Giles looked at him, but Angel's expression was as unreadable as ever.  
  
"Alright," he finally whispered, "Though I swear to God it feels as if we're condemning them."  
  
Angel was nodding sympathetically. "But if we don't ask them, if we don't have help, we might be condemning the town."  
  
  
  
As Giles expected, Jenny, Xander and Willow agreed readily, without a moment's hesitation. Even after he told them the risks involved. Even after he fairly pleaded with them to give a night's worth of thought, to consider the implacations. They wanted to fight.  
  
Angel began to train them in the use of the crossbows - Giles remained steadfast in his assertion that the three of them would get only so close and no closer, and he would broke no argument on the subject. He and Angel would be the only ones in hand-to-hand combat, if and when it came to that. 


	4. Ch.3 - The Harvest

Chapter 3 - The Harvest  
  
The night of the Harvest the Master sat quietly on his throne, pretending to be engrossed in an ancient Mellville, actually looking down his nose at the hundreds of minions scattered around him, intent on his words (or lack their of), almost quivering in excitement. He waited a long while, to let the juices simmer, then looked dramatically at the wall clock.  
  
Time....  
  
"Bring forth the vessel."  
  
At his side, Luke started. "But Master, I was chosen to be -"  
  
"Silence," the Master said patiently. "A change of plans. In honor of my Angel choosing sides against us."  
  
The Master could sense how furious Luke was at the perceived betrayal, but like a good childe, he kept his tongue silent. Until he saw who had been chosen in his place.  
  
Darla strutted forward from the shadows, gracing Luke with a contemptuous smile.  
  
"Her!?" Luke roared, "She is the vessel!? I have been your loyal servant for these hundreds of years and you would choose her over me?"  
  
He moved toward her menacingly, and Darla crouched in a defensive posture.  
  
"You would rush into your own demise over so unimportant a matter as this one, Luke?" the Master spoke icily. "You do not choose your battles wisely, childe."  
  
Luke either didn't hear his master's voice, or chose to ignore him - it didn't matter which. Darla glanced sideways at the Master, saw him nod almost imperceptibly.  
  
She drew a stake out of her coat. Luke grunted in surprise, but his challenge was on the table - he had no choice but to attack. He was strong, had lived and fought at his master's side for two centuries, but Darla had the sire's support, and double Luke's years. He led a vicious charge, but he was simply too bulky to move quickly, and she dispatched him with a flick of her wrist. The Master felt a moment's twinge of regret at his loss, but the sadness was quickly lost in the glory of the night.  
  
Darla went down on one knee in front of her Master. He reached out to her with his left hand - delicately she took it and sank her fangs in, drained a bit of the cold blood, enough to ensure that the blood would flow for the ritual.  
  
"My blood to your blood."  
  
He brought his wrist back, dipped his fingers in like an artist with his pallete, and painted the mark of the triple point on the pale flesh of her forehead. She shivered beneath his touch.  
  
"My soul is your soul."  
  
She opened her eyes - they shone with anticipation.  
  
"My body is your instrument," she intoned breathlessly.  
  
He smiled benevolently down at her. "On this...most hallowed night...we are as one," he stood up tall, looking down on the minions. "Darla is the vessel. Protect her as you would me, with your lives," as if to make a point, he looked down at the pile of ashes that had been Luke.  
  
"Every soul she takes will feed me. And their souls will grant me the strength to free myself. Tonight I shall walk the Earth," he paused, if for nothing else then effect, "and the stars themselves will hide!"  
  
He looked down at Darla, still at one knee at his feet. "Rise, childe."  
  
She stood up.  
  
"Suggestions for the Harvest?"  
  
She grinned ferally. "I know just the place."  
  
Darla and the little knot of vampires strode confidently toward the Bronze. Along the way they drew strange looks from the few who dared to be out at night - but per her order they all wore their human visages.  
  
"Mingle," she told the rest of them as they approached the club. "Dance. Make with the merry. We wait until we've got them surrounded before we make a move."  
  
Inwardly she congratulated herself. The subtle approach would never have occurred to Luke. That was why she was alive and he was gone. And not yet a word from her soul-ridden childe. Perhaps his threats had been a bluff after all.  
  
The doorman, an athletic looking black man with a perpetual scowl, glanced down at her and the others as they approached. "ID."  
  
Darla ignored him, and as she passed he grabbed her roughly by the arm. "Look, girlfriend, no ID, no -"  
  
She whipped around, and grabbed him by the throat, lifting him up a few inches off the ground. "ID enough for you, big man?"  
  
She threw him back to the other vamps, who drained him and left his body in the alley. They entered the bar, locking the door behind them - Darla turned with her finger to her lips, and then was swept away by the crowd.  
  
Xander, Willow, Giles, and Jenny Calendar met Angel at the front entrance of the Bronze, armed to the teeth.  
  
"It's locked up tight," Angel explained. "I found the doorman in the alley. They're in there."  
  
Giles glanced up at the ceiling. "Is there another way in?"  
  
"The windows in the top lead to the upper rafters," Xander said, already making his way to the ladder. Angel followed behind him.  
  
"Wait here," he said, "I'll see if I can get to the front door."  
  
Jesse swayed to the music, eyes roaming here and about. Finally he spied her, dancing, probably taking a break from the gab. It had tried his patience as a human, her incessant chatter; now, with nothing but time in front of him, he thought he could at least stand it. Besides which, the talk would be over soon enough - the real dance would begin.  
  
He moved to her.  
  
"Hey? Hello, caveman boy," Cordelia said, with that infinite air of disdain which clung to her. He grabbed her hand, leading her farther onto the floor, "Hands off the -"  
  
"Shut up," he said calmly. The words had their desired effect.  
  
"Alright," she said, softly, "Maybe one dance."  
  
Darla made her way to the platform, her gaze sweeping around the room to identify where her troops were. They seemed to be in position, one at the locked front door, one at the back exit, and the rest scattered here and there. She shoved the singer out of the way, motioning for one of her lieutenants to come forward. He lifted the girl he was dancing with toward the stage.  
  
"If I might have your attention," she said into the microphone. "Don't panic, please. There'll be plenty of time for dancing later. For singing. You've got the rest of eternity. Welcome..." she spread her arms wide as she vamped out, "welcome to the last night of your lives."  
  
The lieutenant brought the girl forward, a slight young thing, hot- blooded, flushed from her exertions. Darla felt the Master's need, and responded to it, darting forward like an adder to latch onto the girl's neck. She was dry in a matter of seconds. Darla could feel the Master's gratitude in her head, the enormous relief, and still there was more hunger...  
  
She motioned for another victim.  
  
Angel climbed down from the window, Xander at his side, and they crept out across the rafter.  
  
"You aim for the man at her side," Angel whispered. "It's too far a shot to risk hitting one of the humans. We'll have to take Darla out down there."  
  
Xander nodded, and shouldered the crossbow.  
  
The arrow found its mark, and the vampire disappeared. Angel didn't wait to see the results; he hopped over the railing, reaching into his pocket to pull out a stake as he fell. He hit the ground running, and took out the vampire guarding the door in one motion.  
  
Giles was alone when he opened the door. "Where did the girls go?"  
  
"They were going to set up some sort of spell to confuse the vampires. Jenny...Ms. Calendar just said to be ready for anything. What's the situation in here?"  
  
"As near as I can tell there are about 10 of them. The vessel is the blonde at the center of the stage. We have to get to her - there's no telling how many she has to feed on before the Master has the strength to rise."  
  
Giles moved forward, firing the crossbow as he went. Xander continued to fire from the rafter. The vamps began to circle the stage, ignoring the humans except for those already onstage and ready for the vessel. Darla was at the center, out of the line of fire.  
  
Angel shoved the frightened humans toward the back entrance, where Giles had managed to dispatch with the vampire guard. "Move. You'll be safe out there, just follow that guy in the tweed."  
  
He waded through the crowd until he was in the center of the now- empty dance floor.  
  
Darla grinned to see him. "My Angel. How did I know you wouldn't miss this night? It's not too late to join us. To join him." she beckoned to him with one bloody hand. When she spoke again he could hear only the Master's voice. "My childe. Without you the humans are nothing. Rudderless. Join me."  
  
"My soul is your soul," Angel said thoughtfully, as if he hadn't heard her...and then he started to smile.  
  
Darla's own smile melted, replaced by a frown of displeasure, and she flicked her wrist forward - the remaining three vampires charged. He fought them off as best he could, but these fought in a coordinated attack, unlike most of the younger minions he had to face on patrol. He had been trained by the Master himself, in a thousand fighting methods, but with the odds so heavily against him, he could only hold his own, and watch out of the corner of his eye as Darla continued to feed.  
  
Xander turned toward the ladder at the top of the rafter to find Jesse waiting for him.  
  
"Jesse," Xander whispered, and swallowed his guilt back. "Jess, man, I'm sorry -"  
  
"Sorry?" Jesse said calmly, contemptuously. "Sorry. Because I'm not the loser of the group anymore? I'm not the honorary member of the Scooby Gang?"  
  
"No, Jess, it wasn't -"  
  
"I was alone," he said bitterly, though he still wore a hideous grin. "I was the outcast. You had Willow, and she had you. And I had no one."  
  
Xander stared at him, horrified beyond speech.  
  
"But don't be sorry," Jesse continued. "I'm not the man I used to be. I'm in touch, bro. I can smell everything, I can hear everything."  
  
He licked his lips, staring at Xander's neck. "I can hear your heartbeat, your blood pumping."  
  
Xander backed away, raising the crossbow to aim at Jesse's heart.  
  
"Aw, you wouldn't hurt an old friend, would you, Xand-man?" Jesse said, slipping back into his human face. "Nah, too much humanity in you. Don't worry, we'll fix that real -"  
  
Suddenly the room was filled with a bright light. For an instant they were all blinded - Xander could hear Jesse and the other vampires in the room scream in terror and fury, and when he could see again, Jesse was coming for him.  
  
"Looks like Wills and the other teacher aren't playing by the -"  
  
He stopped - Xander was staring at the center of his chest. Jesse looked down to find an arrow in the middle of his heart. He fell into dust.  
  
Giles and Xander scrambled to Angel's side, stakes drawn.  
  
"You fools!" Darla shouted in the Master's voice at the minions. "Protect the vessel!"  
  
Angel started forward, shouting back over his shoulder, "Just keep them off of me for a few minutes."  
  
"You can't hurt me, my Angelus," Darla said in her own voice again, "The laws of nature -"  
  
"My soul to your soul," Angel said confidently, drawing another stake. "Natural law says that the vessel is the Master's body for the night of the Harvest. And I am no childe of the Master's."  
  
Darla backed away looking desperately for a weapon, anything, to block his attack, but he brought the stake down. She caught his hands in hers, and twisted to throw him into the drumset onstage.  
  
"Yes, childe, I am the Master," she said, "And I taught you well. But now is the time for the last lesson, though I'm afraid you may fail the final exam," she snapped the wooden leg off of a chair, "the teacher always keeps himself one step ahead of the pupil."  
  
She hurtled forward, bringing the makeshift stake down in a wide arc toward his heart. He rolled out of the way, off the stage, and she leapt after him. He managed to wrestle the stake out of her hand, but she uppercut, sending him flying over the bar. He stood up, dazed, to find her standing over him, and she threw him over her shoulder. He slid to a halt on the dance floor.  
  
"One final time," she said, "one last dance."  
  
And then there was a crossbow in his hand, and he looked up to see Giles, bleeding and slightly glass-eyed but nonetheless very alive - Angel whirled to face Darla as she hurtled toward him, and pulled the trigger even as she reached out to touch him.  
  
Darla fell into his arms. She started to dissolve in his hands -  
  
- but madly the smile remained on her face.  
  
"Too late, my Angel," she croaked, "Too late."  
  
And then she was gone.  
  
Xander, Giles and Angel stumbled out of the Bronze, Xander clutching his sprained left wrist, Giles wiping at a gash on his forehead which was bleeding copiously into his right eye.  
  
"I...I left them...in the alley," Giles breathed. "They...they said they w-were going to stay there -"  
  
But it was empty.  
  
"Wills?" Xander whispered, terrified, then he spun around, shouted at the top of his lungs, "Willow!"  
  
There was no answer.  
  
A mile away, she stumbled to a halt, and fell to her knees in exhaustion and bald fear. Her sweater was ripped and gashed, as if she had been attacked by a mountain lion. Such as it was it was uncomfortably close to the truth.  
  
She and Jenny had just finished with the spell Ms. Calendar had euphamistically called "The Nightlight" when a trio of demons had surprised them, and advanced on them, between the girls and the only way out of the alley. Jenny had started to mumble another protection spell when the lead vampire had growled something to the other two about silencing the witch - they had leapt forward, clamping their cold hands on both of their mouthes before Jenny could finish the spell.  
  
Half-dragged and half-carried, the girls found themselves in a very few moments standing in front of the Master, who to their horror was apparently no longer imprisoned, and looking immensely satisfied with himself. In a panic, she had thrown herself away from her captor - purely by luck, she had caught the vampire momentarily off-guard, allowing the slightest window. She had wriggled out of his grasp, and turned around to plant a kick into his crotch. Apparently the injury hurt as much in undeath as it did in life - the vamp had fallen, moaning, to the ground.  
  
What had happened next was still a source of confusion to her - the other vampires had started toward her, surrounding her, when the Master had raised his hand to stop them.  
  
"Let the little one go," he had said, voice full of a horribly benevolent kind of a confidence. "We have what we came for. There is time enough for the others later."  
  
She had backed away slowly, unable to take her eyes away from his twisted, paternal presence. The vampires around him had growled at her (though none of them dared give chase) - yet he had smiled warmly at her. Jenny had struggled desperately against the other vampires, to no avail - they had begun to recede into the night, fading, until the only thing that Willow had seen was his grin, lingering like the Cheshire cat in some dark Wonderland.  
  
That was when she had turned to run.  
  
Distantly she heard the sound of sirens, ambulances, police, drawn to the Bronze like flies to rotten meat. Sickly she began to dread returning home - she imagined returning to find her mother on the front stoop, arms open, to tell Willow that Xander had been among the dead found inside the Bronze. On the heels of leaving Ms. Calendar alone against the Master, she thought that such news might drive her out of her mind. All things considered, in the loneliness of the night, perhaps the blissful unawareness of insanity was the best alternative.  
  
But it wasn't her mother she found on the porch when she finally found herself in her neighborhood; not her father, either. It was Xander.  
  
In the moment that he turned to her, she realized with a jolt that he had been harboring the same feelings for her as she had for him for what seemed like forever. She realized it because at this instant, by his agonized expression, she knew he had been experiencing the same dread and terrible fear for her safety that she had for him. In that instant, all thoughts of Jenny Calendar, Rupert Giles, Angel, the Master, had fallen away, leaving nothing but peace (for the brief moment) in their stead.  
  
She ran to him, collapsed into his arms, sobbed helplessly, even as he held her and did the same. They knelt together on the ground, stayed there for a moment, unable to speak, unwilling to move lest the spell be broken and the heavy world come crashing back down on them again.  
  
But finally she pulled away from him, reluctantly, dabbing uselessly at her eyes.  
  
Xander spoke first, with an effort. "Will -" his voice was a husky whisper. "I...I was so t-terrified for you. We couldn't find you at the Bronze, w-we thought the vampires had gotten you...you and Ms. Calendar -" his eyes widened slightly, as if he had just now remembered who else he was supposed to be looking for. "God, Will, have you seen her -"  
  
She shook her head sadly. "She...the Master got her. I was lucky enough to escape -" but very suddenly that seemed wrong, very wrong. It wasn't luck, or fate - it was by design that she was still free and Jenny wasn't. "- t-to get away, but she..." Willow gulped. "They took her away."  
  
Xander nodded solemnly, though she sensed he still felt a guilty sort of relief. Perversely, Willow was touched by the sentiment.  
  
"Where are Angel and G-giles?"  
  
"Still looking for you...you two, I imagine. We'd better get back to them," and there it was, she thought sadly, there he goes again. Unable to look her in the eye, unable to say the words. But finally she had seen it in his face - just a moment before, the look which signified much more then the concern between best friends.  
  
And, dammit, she wouldn't let it slip away from her grasp again.  
  
He started to turn away - she grabbed his hand, gently tugged him back to her, and leaned forward to press her lips into his. And it felt so natural, so timely, even in crisis, that she didn't want to stop it. She wanted to make it grow, stretch into a hundred, a thousand moments. There was nothing awkward or silly or ugly about it, like the hundreds of kisses on TV and the movies that she and Xander had laughed at as children. This was...real, it just...it just was.  
  
They lingered that way for a long time, it seemed, before finally the natural compulsion for oxygen broke them apart. Even after they had taken a deep breath, Xander closed his eyes, leaned in again expectantly - but she unwillingly put her finger to his lips, whispered calmly, "No more. Not now. First we find the others."  
  
Giles and Angel had returned to the library, ostensibly to bandage Giles' wound, actually on the off chance that either of the girls had returned to the only mutual place of safety which all of them knew. Of course it was dark and empty upon their arrival. After 250 years of existence, Angel was prepared to take death and the loss of friends at face value, but he was worried that the glazed look coming over the librarian's eyes was not just the result of the minor concussion he had recieved at the Bronze.  
  
Which was why Angel was nearly as happy for Giles' sake as for Willow's when she walked into the Bronze, Xander a step behind. But the look of infinite sadness on her face when she saw that Giles and Angel were alone was enough to sweep the momentary happiness they all felt away like the insubstantial mist that it was. 


	5. Ch.4 - Head Games

Chapter 4 - Head Games  
  
"Xander."  
  
He stirred in his bed at the sound.  
  
"Xander."  
  
This time slightly more compelling, more forceful - it penetrated the thin wall of sleep he had positioned uneasily around himself during the long night. In the haze of half-asleep he mistook it for Willow's sweet voice - it spoke of innocence, of cold love, long and slow.  
  
"Xan-der...."  
  
This time the voice was sing-song, a travesty of innocence - his fantasy world was shattered by the cold slap of recognition. He didn't want to open his eyes, didn't want to see her standing outside his window, but he couldn't ignore her forever -  
  
Jenny Calendar smirked at him, pale and beautiful face framed by moonlight. Her hands were stuck in the pockets of her leather coat - her breath, if she had still had the need to breathe, might have been fog in the cold night air.  
  
"Relax, boy," she said contemptuously, observing his fright. "I'm not going to hurt you."  
  
"Really not particularly comforting," he said hoarsely. "What do you want, then?"  
  
Her head tilted to one side. "Why do I need a reason to visit an old friend?"  
  
Xander glanced at the alarm clock by his side. "It's 3 o'clock in the morning. Not what I'd call social-visit time."  
  
She shrugged. "Gotta convert to vampire standard time. It's like, tea-time for me."  
  
His heart nearly broke at the icy carelessness with which she said the words.  
  
"God, Ms. Calendar, I'm so sorry -"  
  
"Somehow I think I'll be hearing the same thing from you food-types for the rest of your lives. Would you be so sorry if I said I wanted to kill you and drain the blood from your pathetic body?"  
  
He seized upon what small comfort he could. "You can't come in. I never invited you."  
  
Her smile slackened only slightly. "True. But you can't stay in there forever. And what if I was to walk up and ring the doorbell right now, wait for your Ma and Pa Know-nothing to come answer it, tell them I've got a flat down the road, and could I just come in for a minute and call a tow-truck, pretty-please? I bet they'd welcome me right in."  
  
"Then I'd say you've got a lot to learn about my parents," he replied sourly, though the point was well taken.  
  
She rolled her eyes impatiently. "Fair enough. But I have been invited into the librarian's house, before. Bet he'll be happy to see me," she finished this with a grin that chilled Xander to the bone.  
  
"They why come to me at all?"  
  
"The pleasure of your company," she said sarcastically. "Or maybe just a word of warning. You and yours killed the Master's right-hand chica; word has it he's looking for a replacement, and the red-head fits the job description."  
  
He almost threw himself at the window right there, knowing full well that the gesture would be both foolish and useless. He cursed at the former teacher, but he was as much trapped inside the house as she was trapped outside of it. The being that was once Jenny Calendar backed slowly away, chuckling, under the glaring full moon.  
  
  
  
Willow picked herself up off the bed groggily to answer the telephone.  
  
"Will?" Xander said as she picked up the reciever. He sounded out of breath.  
  
"Xander, what's the matter -"  
  
"Will, was Ms. Calendar ever in your house?"  
  
The question seemed completely absurd in the dark of the morning hours, and she had to ponder silently before she answered.  
  
"No, I don't think so. Why?"  
  
"I..." he paused for a moment. "N-no reason."  
  
She almost laughed, though as the buzz of sleep wore away, she was beginning to feel nervous. "You don't call at 3 o'clock in the morning without a reason. So spill."  
  
He ignored the question. "Will, do you have Giles' home phone number?"  
  
"Well, yeah, I think so, but -"  
  
"Give it to me."  
  
She did so, her confusion mounting with each moment that he hid the reason for his concern from her. "Xander, if there's something -"  
  
"Stay inside," he said, desperately, "please, until morning. No matter...what happens, stay inside."  
  
"But -" she started, but was answered only by the dial tone.  
  
  
  
Xander frantically dialed Giles' number, keeping a wary eye on the window where Jenny had been a few moments before.  
  
It took five rings, five breathless rings, before Giles did pick up the receiver.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Giles," Xander said, feeling relieved. "You have no idea how happy I am to hear your voice."  
  
"Xander?" Giles said, more alertly. "Is something wrong?"  
  
"I...I think so," he paused, not sure of how to break the news. They had all been prepared for the possibility of the Master sending Jenny back to hurt them. But now that the possibility had become a reality, he was uncertain of how to say it. Instinct told him that whatever feelings had been developing between the two adults, Giles would take her undeath the hardest of all of them. "I think...I think I saw Ms. Calendar tonight."  
  
There was a long silence. "Did...did you invite her in?"  
  
"No," Xander said quickly.  
  
"Good," Giles said, his voice haunted and distant. "S-stay inside, uhm, till morning. We'll decide...what to do then."  
  
"Giles?" Xander said before the other man could hang up. "She was in your house, wasn't she? I mean, before?"  
  
Again there was a pause before the librarian spoke. "I'll be careful. We'll try to find a spell...or something, to revoke the invitation. In the morning."  
  
But Xander couldn't leave the issue just standing there. "Giles, she said the Master was going to go after Willow next."  
  
"She said that?" Giles replied, though there was still unnervingly little emotion in his voice. "Call Willow. Tell her to stay -"  
  
"I already did. She said she'd stay inside," Xander paused, unsure of how to ask the next question. "Uh...should we...uhm, make contact with Angel?"  
  
"Even if we knew how, I'm not sure if we have anything useful to tell him. We all...we all knew..." Giles spoke with an effort, as if it physically hurt the librarian to say the words. "This w-was a contingency...we anticipated. It was only...a m-matter of time."  
  
"Yeah," Xander agreed, though just hearing the words didn't make him feel any better.  
  
  
  
Xander called Willow back, and was unsurprised to find she had been waiting for him. He reiterated what had happened - Willow started to cry. Fervently he wished he could be there, right now, at her side, to pull her into his arms.  
  
"It's all my fault -"  
  
It came so far out of left field that for a moment Xander was speechless.  
  
"I should have tried to....to... to do s-something. To...help her -"  
  
"No, Will, don't ever say that," he finally found his voice. "There was nothing...nothing you could have done differently. You did the absolute best you could do, to get away alive."  
  
"But, Xander," she said it almost pleadingly, "I'm alive, and she's...she's not, and what does that mean?"  
  
He didn't know the answer to that. "Why does it have to mean anything? It was just an accident -"  
  
"It wasn't an accident," she said darkly. "He...he let me go."  
  
Again, Xander was stunned. He had just assumed that she had managed to escape somehow, simply wriggled her escape, darted off before the slower vamps could grab her back again.  
  
"Will -"  
  
"Why did you tell me to stay inside?"  
  
His throat contracted into painful knots. "Because...because there might be more of them out there now -"  
  
"No," she said anxiously. "You tell me that everyday. There was some other reason you told me so tonight," she paused as if to gather her strength. "What did she say about me?"  
  
"God, Will -"  
  
"Tell me."  
  
"She..." he felt suddenly desperate to just hang up the phone, to wait and tell her in the morning, when the sun was warm and bright on her face and she was in his arms. He tried to convince himself that it would do more harm than he could fathom to lie to her now. But his throat was too tight to speak.  
  
"She's coming after me next," Willow answered for him, matter-of- factly.  
  
"Willow," he whispered. "I'll always be there to protect you -"  
  
"You're not here now," she said stonily, but almost immediately, "Oh, God, I'm s-sorry, Xander, I didn't mean -"  
  
"I'm coming over there now," he replied, looking for his clothes. "Just stay -"  
  
"No," she said. "I do want you here. You know that. But I want you to be safe. With...with her out there, I want you to be safe more then anything else."  
  
"I love you, Will," he said earnestly - it got easier and easier every time he said it.  
  
"I know. I love you, too."  
  
  
  
"Head games."  
  
The rest of the group turned to Angel. Xander had just finished detailing Jenny's visit of the night before, and they were all readying themselves for the night's patrol, but as always they payed attention when he had something to say. Angel had suspected that the Master would send the computer teacher back among them, and knew the reason why.  
  
"It's all about psychology with them. They've got all the time in the world - rather than just bringing who they want across, still clinging to the human physiology, they'll drive them out of their minds, even if it takes years," he said it clinically, but there was an element of self- loathing in his tone. "It's just better business policy that way."  
  
Willow blanched at his words; Xander gathered her delicate hand into his, but he appeared just as sickened and scared as she did. Giles....Angel worried about the librarian. While he allowed for the possibility that what Ms. Calendar had said to Xander was true, that the Master's next target would be Willow, Angel thought it more likely that it was just so much bluster. He knew vampires, knew the basic nature of the demon, from personal experience - Jenny would go after those she loved most in life first. He didn't know anything about her family life, where she came from, who her kin were, but one thing he did know was that her feelings for the librarian had gone far beyond the platonic level. Judging by the cloud of grief which now wreathed Giles' countenance, the feelings had been mutual...and perhaps still were. Rupert Giles, as strong a man as he had proven himself to be, would be the weakest link in the chain.  
  
"Funny," Xander said bitterly, "Vamps don't strike me as being really into the whole patience gig."  
  
"No, it's not patience," Angel replied in kind, "Just a desire to see the job done right."  
  
He addressed Willow and Giles together. "Have you been able to find a spell to revoke the invitations?"  
  
Willow spoke, glancing worriedly at the librarian. "Yeah, I think so. I need some supplies from the Magic Shoppe"  
  
Angel nodded. "Alright, then you and Giles gather them together. Xander and I will -"  
  
"No," Xander interrupted, with more iron in his voice than any of them had ever heard him use. "Willow and I stay together. At. All. Times. You take Giles out to patrol."  
  
Angel pondered this for a moment, unsure of whether to feel anger or pride toward the boy. After a moment, he decided to split the difference. "Fine. Take her, but go armed, and for God's sake, steer clear of trouble."  
  
Xander looked down at Willow. "Don't worry about it," and they walked out of the library.  
  
Angel turned back to Giles, who was still sitting in the corner, absently checking and rechecking to see whether the crossbow in his hand was loaded.  
  
"Do you feel up to patrolling tonight?"  
  
No answer. Angel felt as if he were conversing with a stone wall. He sighed, and turned back to the door.  
  
"Then just stay here," Angel sneered. "Read over your books. See what good they can do. Certainly didn't do her much good."  
  
"What did you say?" Giles finally spoke, softly, but with an infinite amount of hate and pain in the words.  
  
"I said, it certainly didn't do the computer teacher much good, you sitting on your ass in here all day and night. At least the kids are out there doing something. Trying to protect your worthless hide, if memory serves, while you're busy in here battling lethal hordes of dust mites and -"  
  
Giles flew at the vampire, leading with his right hand curled into a fist. Angel let him come, rolled with the punch to leap to his feet by the counter.  
  
"I wanted to save her," Giles raged at him. "I...I argued with her, when she told me she was going to try the spell, but she wouldn't listen. She knew full well the risks -"  
  
"Risk. You don't know the meaning of the word. She tried because she knew you would be there to save her if she got in trouble. And yet you weren't."  
  
"NOOO!" Giles screamed, charged again. This time Angel grappled with him, and threw him across the floor. Giles rose again, trembling with fury and exhaustion.  
  
"You cared about her -"  
  
"You know I did," Giles replied shakily.  
  
"You loved her."  
  
The librarian seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, trying to keep the edge of his anger sharp...but finally he broke down, sobbing into his hands. Angel walked slowly to him, reaching into his dark coat to pull out a stake.  
  
"You still love her. Use that feeling. It can be your most powerful weapon."  
  
After a moment, Giles gathered himself together, and wiped his face clean with a hankerchief. He gazed at the stake in Angel's hand as if he had never seen one before, but finally took it.  
  
"You did that on purpose," he said hoarsely to the vampire, "to infuriate me."  
  
"Worked, didn't it?" Angel smirked, holding out his hand to help Giles to his feet. "Looked like you needed a cold bucket of perspective dumped on you."  
  
Giles stood up, and used the hankerchief to wipe off his glasses. "You're an evil bastard. I'll give you that."  
  
"This is what they tell me."  
  
  
  
"So explain to me why we have to kill Jenny first?"  
  
Giles winced, but forced himself to answer Willow's question. "Believe me. This...was a d-difficult choice to make, a decision -"  
  
"Why does there have to be a decision at all? I mean, whatever else she is n-now, she's still Jenny under there. I thought...I thought you loved her."  
  
Giles looked down at his lap, opened his mouth to answer, but to his surprise, Xander beat him to the chase.  
  
"Will," he said patiently, "that's just the point. Whatever it was that came to my window the other night...it-it wasn't her. There's none of her left in there. She's just a demon, now."  
  
"A-alright," Willow stammered, pleading with her eyes at Angel. "So she doesn't have a soul. We know how to solve that."  
  
"Hey," Angel stepped forward, said angrily, "this isn't some reward I got for good citizenship. It was a punishment. There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish Darla had drained me and left me to die in that alley. And Jenny will wish the same thing."  
  
"I..." Willow started, and then swallowed, her eyes glistening. "I- I'm sorry. I just don't know if I can l-look her in the face, a-and..."  
  
"It won't be easy...for any of us," Giles remarked seriously, taking one of Willow's hands in his. "But for her sake, and our own, we must. That...that thing, it knows too much about us. It poses much more of a danger to us personally then the Master ever could, simply because i-it knows our weaknesses."  
  
He stood up to look at all of them. "When we do see her again...I'll be the one to end it. You can rest assured of that."  
  
Angel looked at him strangely, almost sadly, seemed on the verge of saying something, when the doors at the head of the library burst open. In the space of a second, a mob of vampires stormed into the library. Angel backed away toward the weapons locker, motioning for the others to do the same.  
  
Jenny and the Master walked into the library, arm in arm.  
  
"You know, it's been ages since I was in a school," the Master said, wistfully admiring the room. "In my day, they were church-organized. Most of the school buildings weren't even as big as this one room. My, but time does fly when you're stuck in a mystical convergence of the space-time contiuum."  
  
"How did you get in here?" Giles said, staring at Jenny.  
  
She cocked her head, smirking at him. "We were invited. The sign in front of the school - 'Formatia trans sicere educatorum' -"  
  
"'Enter all ye who seek knowledge'," Angel said, grimacing.  
  
"Remind me to have a word with the janitor about that," Xander said, reaching for one of the crossbows. "So...uh, bad guys, you've had the standard tour. Don't let the door hit you on the ass as you're leaving."  
  
The Master turned to regard the boy. "Bold words. But rather rude, especially coming from the hosts. If there is one thing terribly wrong about these modern times, it is the woeful lack of old world manners. Perhaps a lesson is in order," with that he waved the minions forward patiently.  
  
"12 against four," Giles murmured to Angel, who stood to his left warily watching the advancing vampires. "Not terribly good odds."  
  
"I've fought against worse."  
  
"Really?" Giles said, surprised.  
  
"No," Angel replied flatly, glancing quickly sideways at the librarian. "But the next time we face eleven, I can say the same thing, and then it'll be the truth."  
  
Giles found to his surprise that he could not help but smile. "You know, I think I'm actually -" but he was interrupted as the vampires roared, and charged as one body.  
  
  
  
The next few minutes were a blur to Giles. Somehow they managed to duck the first wave of demons, though Xander came away with a nasty cut on his cheek, and Angel was being beaten from all sides. Giles hacked and slashed with the kind of reckless abandon he had not allowed himself since his adolescent days, and staked two of the vampires before they could mount another charge. But as the fight began to wear on, he could see that the side of right was rapidly losing the battle to both vampires and exhaustion.  
  
Then he was facing Jenny, and all thoughts of exhaustion were banished from his mind.  
  
"Earlier I believe you said you wanted to be the one to kill me," she said cruelly, opening her arms, and pointing at her chest. "I think you know how. So do it, Rupert. Put the stake through my heart. End my existence."  
  
"Damn you," he said stonily. "Show me your real face."  
  
"Oh, no, Rupert, this is it. This is all you get. But why should it be any harder this way?" she frowned, an expression of faux-sadness on her features, and walked up to him. "You fell in love with this face. Now I'm an evil, soulless demon, a Black Hat, a killing machine," she reached up, and brought the stake and his hand down to point at her heart. "All you have to do is raise the stake to give my tortured conscience its just reward." Her voice turned more and more sarcastic as she spoke, and as she finished, she laughed merrily. "My God, Rupert, you are still in love with me, or this would have been over long ago."  
  
With a fluid and incredibly quick movement, she tore the stake out of his grasp. "Oh, well. Perhaps it's not too late to make some use of you yet."  
  
With a roar of pain and anger that surprised them both, he reached back to backhand her across the face. She flew back into the counter, her mouth a perfect O of surprise, which quickly melted into the demon's sneer of rage.  
  
To her astonishement, he sighed in relief. "Thank God, " he said, reaching into his pocket to pull out another stake, "I might not have been able to do it."  
  
But before he could move, the Master grabbed him from behind, throwing him head-first into the wall. Giles slumped to the floor, unconcious.  
  
"Not yet, Rupert Giles," the Master whispered thoughtfully, "Not...just...yet."  
  
  
  
Angel tore through the vampires around him, growling furiously, nearly losing himself to the madness. Around him, in an extremely peripheral manner, he realized that the battle had been lost - Giles lay motionless against a far wall, dead or out cold. Xander was still fighting, but even as Angel stopped for an instant to look, the boy was hammered by one of the bigger demons, and fell to the floor. Willow was already draped across one of the minion's shoulders. He was the last one standing.  
  
The Master waved his vampires away from the center of the library, and stood to face Angel.  
  
"You know, I'd forgotten just how much fun it is to get out and actually handle my business personally."  
  
Angel ignored the comment, and launched himself at the elder vampire. A quick exchange of blows proved that fifty years in the Sunnydale caverns had not diminished the Master's abilities one iota. The Master defended himself from Angel's attack with an air of boredom, bordering on disdain.  
  
"I believe you're a better fighter now then you were without a soul, Angelus," the Master said, almost bored, blocking Angel's right with his own, and sending Angel flying back over the table with his left. "I don't know what it was, but it just seemed like sometimes, in the old days, you couldn't bring yourself to give your best effort unless you were pulling someone else's fingernails off."  
  
Angel leapt to his feet, and rushed the Master again, leading with his foot; again, the other vampire anticipated, blocking the blow, but this time Angel reached up and under, drawing the stake that had been hidden in his sleeve into his hand to send toward the Master's ancient heart. It was a desperation move, and he knew it, but he didn't know how the situation could possibly get any worse...  
  
The Master was caught off guard for the space of a millisecond, but a thousand years of careful study and training, and the reflexes of a vampire in the prime of a long, long life, saved the demon from death. He gave Angel a look of mixed pride and bemusement, and Angel took the opportunity to spit in his face.  
  
"You -" the Master sputtered furiously. "I allowed you a seat in my council for a century, and you repay my generosity by spitting on me!"  
  
He threw Angel across the room, and reached up delicately to wipe the blood-tinged spittle from his cheek.  
  
"Perhaps," the Master said, calm and collected again. "Perhaps it is my own fault for believing I could sway you away from the side of...righteousness again." He smiled benevolently, looking down at the other three captives. "But not to worry, I very fortunately have the chance to correct my mistake, and to start anew."  
  
Angel roared with anger, and stood up to charge again. The Master motioned at Jenny Calendar, who calmly drew a tranquilizer pistol from the pockets of her coat, and hit the vampire midstride. Angel fell to unconciousness at the Master's feet. 


	6. Ch.5 - Sunset

Chapter Five - Sunset  
  
He woke to find himself in nearly complete darkness, bound in chains and gagged. His vampiric eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, and he glanced around. The other three were there, still unconcious, and a fourth, also bound - with a start, he realized that it was Jenny Calendar. She was staring at him.  
  
"I was wondering when you'd wake up," she said crossly.  
  
He could only look at her.  
  
She glanced down. "Yeah, I know what you're wondering. What's a pretty girl like me doing strapped to a concrete wall? The answer is I don't know. I guess I couldn't read the Master any better than any of you saps could."  
  
"Jenny," Giles muttered, hearing her voice in his dreams.  
  
"King Sap of them all," she whispered sarcastically, shaking her head.  
  
Angel looked around the room. For all intents and purposes, it seemed to be a jail cell. He strained against the chains, and sensed that even at full strength he wouldn't be able to break them.  
  
Jenny watched him struggle, and started to giggle. It was a nervous and ugly sound in the darkness. He wished she would stop, but the laughter seemed to echo longer and longer, stretching to infinity.  
  
  
  
"Rise and...well, just rise. Me and shine are having a lover's quarrel at present."  
  
Angel looked up at the sound of Jenny's taunting voice to find that the humans were coming around.  
  
Giles glanced around, squinting his eyes, and Angel realized that the humans probably couldn't see a thing. "Who's there? Where are we?"  
  
"It's me, lover," Jenny answered, and Giles' face fell.  
  
"Get away from us," the librarian said huskily.  
  
"Might pose a problem," she replied, "Seeing as how I'm just as captive as you are."  
  
"I don't believe it."  
  
"And I don't care," she said blandly, "but Angel can tell you."  
  
Giles looked around, futily, in the darkness. "Angel, are you there?"  
  
"He's gagged, for whatever reason. Maybe he can moan at you."  
  
"I'm here," Angel said, and though it came out muffled by the cloth in his mouth, Giles nodded.  
  
"Where are we being held?"  
  
"The house on haunted hill," Jenny snickered.  
  
"I think we're in the warehouse district," Xander said groggily from the other side of the small room. "Smells like sea water."  
  
"Why would the Master set up base here?" Willow asked.  
  
"Oh, think about it, Red," Jenny replied, grinning when she saw Willow grimace at the nickname, "Nice and deserted. Plenty of big, hot- blooded sailors to feed on, with no ties to the world at large. Perfect for evil goings-on."  
  
Giles struggled with the ropes for a moment. Jenny Calendar watched him without much emotion.  
  
"No use, Rupert," she intoned, "If these things can hold me, they can sure as hell hold you."  
  
He ignored her, but realized soon that he couldn't escape. "Why didn't he kill us?" He said it quietly, as if the question was rhetorical, but Jenny answered it anyway.  
  
"He's got all the time in the world. Why shouldn't he have his cake and eat it too?"  
  
"It's not cake we're worried about him eating," Xander said, but the quip was met with a resounding silence.  
  
For her part, Jenny ignored him. "I'm surprised Angel didn't tell you. He and the Master were bosom buddies back in the day."  
  
"Yes, he told us," Giles said darkly. "He said that the Master will try to drive us all mad before he...kills us."  
  
"Exactly," Jenny replied, sounding almost satisfied with herself. "Maybe he'll test you," Angel looked at her sharply, fear in his eyes. She smiled toothily at him. "That's what he does. He's holding all the cards - he can afford to offer you your pathetic lives. For. A. Price," she was staring off into space - Angel wondered sickly if she was speaking from personal experience. "He'll tell you...he's testing your mettle. Just to see how inhuman you can be."  
  
Her eyes found his again, and she grinned. "Angel knows all about that. Just ask Drusilla."  
  
The floodlights came up then, bright, pointed almost directly into their faces, so that whoever was outside could see them, but they could not see out.  
  
"I trust you find yourselves not too uncomfortable," the Master's disembodied voice floated smoothly into the light. "My apologies if the surroundings are less then hospitable - this housing is only temporary. I have just heeded the advice of my dear Ms. Calendar and have begun the process of acquiring that lovely establishement known to you children as the Bronze."  
  
Horror blossomed on the faces of the humans.  
  
The Master's voice smiled. "Perhaps, with the right...persuasion, you will find it more to your liking. The previous owners were surprisingly congenial, and, if I may say, quite delicious company."  
  
There was a chuckling noise from several sources in the darkness, and then the Master walked into the edge of the light, the gracious host. "Ms. Calendar may have told you - I despise rudeness. Humanity seems to excell at it, even cultivate it. The one advantage I enjoyed while trapped underneath Sunnydale was the fact that the only contact I had to have with them was that of consumer and consumed. Now that I am aboveground, to stay, I suppose I'll just have to adjust."  
  
He gazed over them, like a farmer clinically surveying five head of cattle. He stared each of them in the eye, daring them to stare back, until they bowed their heads in supplication. Finally his dark eyes fell on Jenny Calendar.  
  
"I believe an explanation is in order," he said, almost embarassed, as if he had just spilled a drink on her new cocktail dress.  
  
"I'll say," she hissed at him, morphing to the demon's face.  
  
"Oh, now, no need for dramatics," he said good-naturedly. "You might be young and excused by a certain...naivette, but don't believe for a moment that I will let such insolent behavior go unpunished for long."  
  
"Then why did you lock me up like this?" she said, more cautiously, switching back slowly to her human face. "After the way you treated me -"  
  
"A test," he smiled, "And you passed."  
  
Jenny couldn't hide her relief at his words, slumping against the wall. "And I thought I was the teacher. Well, if the pop quiz is over, then how about helping me out of -"  
  
"Not...just yet, my dear."  
  
She froze in place, staring at him, a mixture of anger and confusion on her face.  
  
He turned slowly on his heel, and moved silently to Willow's side. She slunk as far away from him as she could, but eventually the chain ran out, and he stood in front of her, nearly touching her.  
  
"Willow, isn't it?" he purred. She didn't answer. He reached out with one cold hand to caress her face. "You...you were the one that helped Ms. Calendar with the spell at the Bronze," he turned his head slightly back toward Jenny. "What did you call it, the "Nightlight"? How apropos."  
  
She shuddered underneath his touch.  
  
"You're quite the powerful young witch. You probably don't even know it. Not to worry - your skills will manifest themselves with age, my dear. Perhaps...with the right tutelage -"  
  
"You stay the hell away from her," Xander said, low and dangerous. "If you want somebody, take me."  
  
"Oh, don't think I don't appreciate the offer, Mr. Harris," the Master replied, not taking his eyes off of the trembling young girl. "And I will keep it in mind. But now is not the time for heroics."  
  
Abruptly he stepped away from her. "But look at me. Just a few days removed from exile underground, a few days into the modern world, and already I'm forgetting my place as host. I won't keep you away from home any longer if you don't want me to. I'm sure your parents must be very worried," he waved two of his minions forward. "Forgive me, Willow, and come again when you think I've served my sentence in your Purgatory. Release her."  
  
She stared at him stupidly, as did the rest of the group, and didn't move when the vampires unlocked her chains. She glanced at the other humans, but found no answers, no comfort.  
  
"Xander..."  
  
"Oh, I suppose you can have him, too," the Master said graciously, motioning for the vampires to release the boy. "Consider it a parting gift."  
  
Xander scrambled to her side, drawing her up into a tight embrace. They stood that way for a long moment, and again Willow found herself wishing that it would just stay this way, that they would all be gone when she opened her eyes again.  
  
Xander turned back to Giles and Angel. From their eyes he could see they wanted nothing more than for the two of them to leave, now, while they still could. Somehow that made the leaving worse.  
  
But he wrenched his gaze away, and started to lead the shivering Willow out of the grated cell -  
  
"There is...one small favor I must ask," the Master said.  
  
Willow froze in absolute horror.  
  
"To have your freedom, you must kill the librarian."  
  
She moaned almost inaudibly as the vampires moved to stand between them and the door. She turned slowly to look at the ancient vampire.  
  
"What?" she whispered, terrified.  
  
"A simple matter," the Master said to her cooly. "Housekeeping, you understand. He will die, in any case. If it is left up to me, it will be in the most slow and agonizing way I can devise. I thought perhaps it might comfort you to do it yourself," his tone turned sarcastic, " So that you can rest easier at night, knowing he died quickly and painlessly."  
  
"But..." she started, and had to force herself to swallow, "But I d- don't... I d-don't -"  
  
"Don't want to?" he sounded almost disappointed. "Ah, well. So goes the noble human spirit. Such a shame. Alright, lock them back up. Alfred, would you be good enough to bring me the number four handsaw, oh, and a bunch of newspapers -"  
  
"Wait!" Giles' voice boomed through the warehouse. "Wait."  
  
He looked at Willow, who could not bring herself to look him directly in the eye.  
  
"Willow, I want you to do it -"  
  
"- no -"  
  
"- Willow, my life is over. You have to know that -"  
  
"I can't!" she screamed shrilly at him. "Don't you realize what you're asking me to do? You...you treated me like an adult, l-like I mattered, like my parents never treated me. You made me realize w-what it means to really be important, outside of school, outside of Sunnydale, and I just...I can't -" her voice finally broke, and she seemed on the verge of collapsing to the concrete floor. Xander held her up silently.  
  
The Master pulled a long knife out of his pocket. It was ornately carved, vaguely Oriental in style, a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand years old - staring at it in the bright light, Willow could almost believe she saw the blood of its past victims stained onto the blade.  
  
"A flick of the wrist will end his pain, here and now," the Master said solemnly, walking slowly up to her again. "Do it, and walk out of here, alive and with my promise that neither you nor Xander nor you family or friends or children or children's children will be harmed. Don't, and watch your friends and your lover taken apart, bit by bloody bit."  
  
She reached out to take the blade in her hand dreamily, turned back to Giles, and put the point at his throat.  
  
"The carotid artery," he whispered, closing his eyes and turning his head. "Just under the left ear. It will be almost instantaneous."  
  
She didn't hear him. She stared, utterly fascinated, at his neck, watched the blood pulse through his vein, beat...beat...beat. She imagined it slowing...slowing......slowing. She pictured all that lovely blood, red, red, flowing over his face, his clothes, her hands. Would the vampires come to lap it up like cats drawn to spilt milk? She nearly laughed at the image, and then leaned over to retch. Giles stared down at her in horrified pity. Her knees buckled, and she fell to the ground with a soft grunt.  
  
"I...can't do it," she said, her voice dead.  
  
"No matter," the Master said briskly, drawing a wooden stake out of his seemingly bottomless pocket. "I was looking forward to torturing him myself. Alright, a new deal is struck. You and Xander can leave, if you kill Angel. He's just another vampire, a demon, like the dozens you've all had a hand in killing during the last few months, so it shouldn't present any problems."  
  
She didn't even look up. "I can't kill him, either."  
  
"Well..." he said, affecting surprise. "This is...quite unfortunate. Still, I'm nothing if not willing to barter. You and the boy can leave, if you kill Ms. Calendar. Vampire, demon, et cetera, and she doesn't even have a soul."  
  
He handed her the stake, and she contemplated it for a moment, before rising to walk to her former teacher. Jenny Calendar growled at her.  
  
"Ms. C-Calendar..." Willow said, staring into the other woman's hypnotic yellow eyes, "Ms. Calendar...I'm s-sorry..."  
  
She looked at the stake for a moment, then whipped around to charge the Master. His face registered surprise, real surprise, for the barest hint of a second, but he caught himself in time enough to draw her, struggling, into his arms, turn her around, and sink his fangs into her tender neck.  
  
"No!" Xander screamed, and ran at the vampire, but the minions caught him just before he could reach them. They forced him to the ground, three of them, and still he struggled furiously.  
  
Willow felt the Master's teeth, his cold mouth, seeping the life from her body, and yet was strangely detached from it all. She could hear Xander, and Giles, shouting her name, as if just that simple action could save her. She felt numb, and tingly, like when she had her teeth removed, and the dentist had given her his "funny gas" (trademark pending). She remembered the gas had made her feel sick. It had seemed as if the dentist had only put her under for a few seconds, but when she came back to herself, the operation had been over, her teeth in a little bottle that she still had tucked away in her desk drawer. She had asked her mother whether the missing teeth had bled much. Her mother had said no. But why not? Willow-the-child had asked. I don't know, her mother had replied crossly, distracted by the article she had been reading in Redbook.  
  
Willow laughed to herself - was this how she was going to spend the last few seconds of her life, fretting over the moments she had never had with her Mom? She tried to think of something more pleasant - Xander came to her mind's eye. In elementary school, that first day in the playground, sitting on the bench beside her with his gigantic glasses and thlight lithp, and his dark, soulful eyes that were the reason she had loved him in the first place. In middle school, facing off with Larry for once, not backing down, when the bully wouldn't stop picking on her, and earning a black eye for his efforts. The first day of high school, sheepishly asking around to find out where the hell the Bronze was, she following quietly behind him, ever the loyal sidekick. Why hadn't she asked him then? Why did it have to be so late in the game, for both of them, before they realized what truly bound them together? Now it was over...  
  
And then she tasted the blood, his blood, in her mouth, and the Thing that was not her making itself at home in her head, and she realized that it was not over.  
  
It had just begun.  
  
  
  
Xander stared with open-mouthed horror at Willow's body as the vampires hauled  
  
it away over their shoulders like a slaughtered doe. Giles empathized with the boy - of course he hadn't seen the moment Jenny had been killed, but this was exactly how he had imagined it. The Master motioned for them to take her body outside and upstairs, and Xander followed without a struggle or word of protest.  
  
The Master turned to Giles, his scarred and pitted face as pleasant as he could make it. "At last, the librarian. The main course for the evening. In a purely metaphorical sense, that is."  
  
He motioned, and the minions moved forward to unlock Giles from his chains. The librarian rubbed his wrists, trying to nurse the circulation back into his hands. "What do you want with me?"  
  
"Just...to talk. It's been many years since I last held a meaningful conversation with another intellectual. You have no idea how long it takes for a vampire to regain his reason, his sense of refinement, after he's been turned. Assuming he survives those first few months."  
  
"Forgive me," Giles said hollowly, "If I'm not in the mood for conversation."  
  
"Quite understandable," the Master said congenially. He snapped, and again the minion vampires scurried to do his bidding. After a moment, a stoop of wine and two clear glasses were set on a small table in the jail cell. "Perhaps some wine, to loosen the tongue -"  
  
"What kind of game are you playing at?" Giles interrupted.  
  
"No games, Rupert," the Master replied evenly. "Plenty of time for games later. We have nothing but the empty playing field of endless time before us. I don't wish to waste it, any more then the next man, but...well, it is there."  
  
He poured the wine. Giles was unsurprised to find that it was a rich red.  
  
"Merlot. Chateau Briogne, 1957," the Master lifted up his glass, tipped it in Angel's direction, and took a delicate sip. "An excellent vintage."  
  
Giles was struck dumb by the surrealism of the scene. He turned to look at Jenny Calendar, who appeared as confused and frustrated as he did. He looked at Angel, but the vampire's head was cast down, as if he were bowing in the face of certain defeat. Or perhaps the vampire already knew what was coming.  
  
"Now what?" Giles said hoarsely, turning back to the Master.  
  
"Now..." the Master contemplated his wine glass, swirling its contents around. "Now...if you really don't care to talk, then I suppose it's only fair if I offer you the same exchange I did for Willow. If you insist on refusing my refreshment, and my company, then kill Ms. Calendar, or Angel, and you are free."  
  
Giles swallowed. The Master offered him the wooden stake.  
  
"Unfortunately the entertainment value of these exercises wanes. The offer is on the table - make your decision."  
  
He did. He forced himself to move before he had the time to consider what he was doing, picked up the stake and strode toward Jenny Calendar.  
  
"Rupert," she said, her expression pleading and very human, "Rupert, I -"  
  
He shoved the stake into her heart, and she faded away.  
  
The Master paused, mid-sip, not bothering to hide his astonishement. "My God, man. You actually did it."  
  
Giles ignored him, and started toward the door. One of the minions moved to stop him -  
  
"No," the Master said, eyeing the librarian placidly. "Let him go."  
  
This, too, Giles ignored. He walked out of the grated cell door, down the corridor, with the shambling cadence of a zombie.  
  
"I didn't think you had it in you, librarian," the Master's voice followed him out of the warehouse, down the street, forever and forever at his shoulder.  
  
Giles didn't stop until he was home, standing in front of the liquor cabinet, key in hand, and even then he only paused for a moment - but it was too much to ask for him to think now. Better to just surrender to oblivion. He opened the cabinet, pulled out some nameless, generic, dime- store whiskey, and ripped the wrapping off. He swallowed, and swallowed, drank until his lungs ached for oxygen and his throat seemed to be on fire.  
  
He stumbled to the couch, and tried very hard to forget. 


	7. Epilogue - Twilight

Epilogue - Twilight  
  
"I think something's wrong with him -"  
  
The voice was distant and barely discernable, though he thought it was feminine.  
  
"- don't know if he's breathing -"  
  
He felt a cold hand on his forehead, and reached up with an arm which seemed to weight a thousand pounds to brush it away.  
  
"No wonder," a male voice, this time, sounding faintly amused. "Looks like he polished off most of a bottle in about four hours. It's a wonder he's not dead."  
  
Giles didn't want to wake up. Not that he could remember anything with as much alcohol in his system as he had, but he sensed...something was wrong. Something...very... bad had happened, something very unpleasant awaited him when he returned to the land of the sober. But the buzz was wearing off. He had to get to the booze -  
  
He opened his eyes to find Willow looking down at him, concern etched into her pale features.  
  
"Thank goodness," she said, relieved. "Didn't think you were going to come back to us for a minute there."  
  
Xander stood over her shoulder, looking down at them both, whiskey bottle in hand. Giles reached for it drunkenly, but Xander pulled it away, out of reach.  
  
"Ah, not so fast, G-man," he said. "Smart guy like you oughta know when enough's enough. Oh, and I'll need your keys, too. Friends don't let friends... etc., etc."  
  
Willow reached up to stroke his face tenderly. "Don't worry, Giles, Willow'l take good care of you."  
  
"You're...wrong," he slurred, trying in vain to push her away. "You...you both, you're not..."  
  
"Not what, book man? Not the same as we used to be?" Xander replied, walking slowly into the small kitchen. "We're not the ones pickled stiff, riding the couch like somebody died. We're out there, man, livin' the life, seein' the sights, paintin' the town a bright, shiny red."  
  
Giles heard him rummaging around in the fridge. "Jeez, G, don't you have anything besides milk and old takeout?"  
  
Giles felt sick, but for some reason answered anyway. "Fruit juice...lower left shelf."  
  
Xander stuck his face back around through the doorway. His eyes were yellow, his forehead ridged - his smile held the promise of pain and a slow, seeping death. "Actually I was thinking more along the lines of O- positive. Hey, that's your type, isn't it?"  
  
Xander sauntered back into the living room, and took a swig of the whiskey, swallowing it with a grimace. "Christ, where'd you get this damn stuff? Tastes like 80-proof dog piss."  
  
"How d-did you get in here?"  
  
"Easy enough," Willow replied innocently, still casually stroking his hair, as if she was petting the family dog. "Once you invite somebody in to your house, the invitation stands until the person's dead. Really dead. Oh, and you left the front door wide open."  
  
Giles reached shakily into the coat of his vest to bring out the small cross he kept constantly within reach, and shoved it into Willow's face. She hissed furiously, batted the cross away, and picked him up bodily by the neck. He choked, grabbed desperately at her hand, but it was like just so much unfeeling marble -  
  
"Easy, Will," Xander said calmly from behind her. "Sire said hands off the librarian. For now."  
  
Willow's face slid back to the mask of normalcy, and she set the librarian back down carefully on the couch. "Doesn't mean we can't have a little fun, right?"  
  
"Fish of the large variety to fry, Will," Xander replied. He moved to put his arm protectively around her small waist. "Just came to lay down a friendly warning, book man. Master gave you his word he wouldn't touch you or yours as long as you stay off our turf. But you come after us again, and you'll feel pain like you can't imagine."  
  
"What about Angel?" Giles coughed, rubbing his bruised throat.  
  
Willow giggled, and nuzzled into Xander's chin. "Really not your concern," Xander answered cryptically.  
  
"Get out of my house," Giles said weakly.  
  
Xander shook his head, chuckled, but turned with Willow to leave.  
  
"Keep the door open, G-man," the vampire said derisively. "We'll be around."  
  
They melted into the darkness, and Giles was alone again.  
  
  
  
Finito 


End file.
